


under the shade

by rikacain



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dogs, Food Porn, Ghosts, M/M, Minor Pairings Mentioned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2020-05-31 07:11:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19421029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikacain/pseuds/rikacain
Summary: Iruka's been chasing idiots out of the old academy for years.What, you think abandoned buildings aresafe?Or, a love letter to pork ribs, ghosts, dogs, and ghost dogs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [water_bby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_bby/gifts).



> water_bby requested for a Supernatural/Fantasy AU, and I hope I delivered!! This AU was borne out of my apparently absorbed Eastern Asian cultural beliefs, a mix of ghost hunting animes I watched when I was younger (Ghost Hunt, anyone) and a smattering of other inspirations I shoved into the fic as I would. I really hope you'll like it. 
> 
> Indulgently set in an alternate Konoha universe, with all of its anachronisms, in its time period equivalent of Meiji Era. Just for the aesthetics. (Explanations below.)
> 
> A huge thank you to drelfina, who held my hand throughout this entire thing while I was trying to hash it out from a concept in my head, and to Cassie, who edited my fic to be the best version that it could be.

There was a man feeding the dogs in the old academy hall.

Iruka stepped into the hall ready to give a lecture about trespassing on areas clearly marked "do not trespass" and the dangers of entering a condemned building. People occasionally came in looking for the thrill of an abandoned school, rarely paying attention to the strays taking up residence in the academy hall. Perhaps it’s their grubbiness, or maybe the mundanity - sudden sounds and movements were less terrifying when they turned out to be a grungy mutt chasing his own tail. 

At most they merited a disappointed sneer - so finding the dogs gathered around the trespasser, tails wagging fiercely and drool dripping furiously into the cracks of the dulled hardwood floor, and said trespasser crouching down and giving them belly rubs was nothing short of baffling.

Iruka cleared his throat, and the man looked up at him, revealing an eyepatch and a mask that obscured most of his face. The eye left visible and bare widened in surprise as he registered Iruka’s presence before him.

He would have been taken aback by the mask, but in the years of the Fire _daimyo_ ’s subtle appreciation of the imported fashion from the Land of Lightning and the resulting enthusiastic adoption throughout the Land of Fire the trend of mix-and-match between the two cultures had become quite prominent. While Iruka vastly preferred the traditional _kosode_ and _hakama_ , he must admit that the banded collar shirts were easier to wear than the usual _juban_. Others more adventurous than he had taken to including shawls and bowler hats in their apparel, to varying degrees of actual fashionability.

The man before him seemed to have embraced a mix of both - a _kosode_ tucked into a pair of baggy trousers, and a _haori_ of dark blue, worn from constant use. A pair of laced boots and a scarf set the attire off very nicely - the eclectic choices in his clothing certainly drew attention away from his covered face.

Fashion style aside, the old academy was dangerous. The man really shouldn't be here. 

"There are better places to feed dogs," Iruka told him. "Than a condemned school building."

"Ah." The man brushed his hands off on his trousers - _was he feeding them dog biscuits?_ \- and stood up. The dogs whined, scrambling to their feet to stick their noses insistently wherever the scent of dog biscuits was strongest. "I have permission to be here?"

Like Iruka never heard _that_ before.

"In a condemned school building," he repeated, raising an eyebrow. 

"The government asked me to survey the building for demolition," the man told him. "You can take it up with Sarutobi-san if you want."

Iruka really couldn't. "You're really telling me Sarutobi Hiruzen- _sama_ ," with emphasis on his honorifics, because as the village's leader he deserved the respect, "asked you to survey a building that's clearly falling apart?"

"Sarutobi Asuma, actually," the man said mildly. Iruka blinked - the last he heard of Asuma, he had gone off to the capital. It was quite the public row between him and his father, and Iruka expected... well, it had been years. "Look, Asuma really should have told you I was coming. Unless..."

The man blinked, slow and considering. "You are the custodian, right?"

"With the amount of time I've been spending in this place, I might as well be," Iruka grumbled. "But no. I'm a teacher over at the Academy. The kids like to dare each other to stay overnight. Adults too - you won't believe how many couples think that a haunted school building is an excellent place to get frisky."

"I can imagine," the man surmised.

"Permission or not,” Iruka said pointedly, “this place really isn't safe, especially at night. Sarutobi-san should know better."

"It isn't safe for you either."

"I've been around long enough to know where to step." The look Iruka impressed onto him hopefully conveyed the fact that the man clearly did not. "And I won't have you breaking your neck just because you claim that Sarutobi-san asked you to look this place over."

The man scratched his head. "How about if you guide me around?"

"Absolutely not."

"Maa, it was worth a try.” Iruka doubted that there would be a dearth of attempts. The man would be back another day, as genial as he sounded - he looked like the type that didn't give up easily.

Iruka used to admire that in a person. Now, it was only a burden. 

"Out you go..."

"Kakashi."

"Kakashi-san." Iruka gestured towards the door. Kakashi sighed and picked up the bamboo-weave bag and the waxed-paper umbrella leaning against the door. His entourage of adoring dogs shifted around him, a restless cloud of fur and fangs flowing towards a singular source of treats. They easily ignored Iruka, save for one that wandered up and snuffled at his hand, hopeful for some scratches.

He ignored her for now, in favor of the dog-magnet in front of him.

"Do I get a name?" Kakashi asked. "So I can tell Asuma to come and talk to you?"

"Even an order from Hiruzen-sama himself wouldn't stop me from chasing you out," Iruka told him drily.

"Just the name then?" Kakashi widened his one eye. Maybe in another time and place, his persistence would be charming. It certainly reminded Iruka of Naruto. "I'd hate to come back and ask again."

Iruka shook his head, sighing. It was a risk, but...

"Iruka," he finally said. "Don't let me see you around here again, Kakashi-san."

"Of course," Kakashi said, entirely too affable. Iruka harboured no doubts that he would take the words literally - whether he was telling the truth about Asuma aside, Kakashi would definitely return behind Iruka's back. Iruka wagered that Kakashi would find that task rather hard. "Say, Iruka-sensei - I don't suppose you've seen any actual ghosts in your time chasing after your students? They say there was a murder-suicide pact..."

Less suicide and more murder, but rumors took flight.

"The only ghost around here is probably me." He smiled wryly at Kakashi. "I've given enough people of a scare when I find them mid-coitus."

Kakashi barked out a laugh. Shame really, that they couldn't stay and chat, but the old academy really wasn't safe.

The dog at Iruka's hand gave him another nudge. Iruka needed Kakashi to leave before he could scratch her.

"Kakashi-san," he said again, insistent.

Kakashi put his hands up in the universal sign of defeat.

"Alright, alright," he said, his eye flicking downwards. Iruka kept himself still - _could he see_ \- but Kakashi only seemed to be… well. Checking him out. Iruka refused to flush. "I'll get out of your hair, Iruka-sensei."

Kakashi pushed the door open, stepping out into the corridor bathed in the fading evening light. He was likely to head out the way everyone came in: the broken window in the principal's office. The door to the main entrance might still usable, but the _genkan_ it opened up into was so thoroughly unnavigable with its shelves tipped over and splintered across the floor.

Iruka would block the window if he could, but he had little doubt in the tenacity of people looking to enter places they were not meant to be in. They probably would break another window. It was what he would do.

Kakashi took a step towards the exit - before turning to look at Iruka. “Aren’t you leaving too?"

Iruka shook his head.

"I'm still looking for one of my students," he lied. "And no, you're not allowed to accompany me."

"I wouldn't have presumed," Kakashi protested, more amused than indignant. Iruka knew with no shred of uncertainty that he would."I'll know if you're still wandering around," Iruka warned him.

"Of course," Kakashi said, clearly humoring Iruka. "Good evening, sensei.”

Iruka watched him saunter toward the principal’s office, turn around to check if Iruka was still there, and give a jaunty little wave before disappearing through the doorway. The dogs trailed back into the hall past Iruka, settling in for the night - but the one next to Iruka whined plaintively at him, expectant.

“You are entirely spoilt,” Iruka sighed, reaching down to scratch behind her ears. He avoided her mess of a right eye, bloody yet not bleeding, and she pushed her head up against his hand even more insistently. Iruka couldn't blame her - months of being unable to touch or talk to anyone would make any human or animal desperate for affection of any kind.

It took a year for Iruka to be able to manifest himself physically, and another to trick people into thinking that he’s alive. To be a ghost was an unbearably lonely existence, and every so often he dreamt about leaving or moving on. There should be more to see in the afterlife instead of the rotting walls of the old academy - but no. Not when he had a job to do.

“Maybe he left you some biscuits on the floor,” he encouraged her, even if he was fairly sure the rest had already gobbled up even the smallest of crumbs. She yipped at him and trotted through the closed door of the hall, the severed stump of her tail wagging in full force.

Iruka took one last look at the principal’s office - just in case Kakashi decided to try his luck within five minutes of Iruka chasing him out - and walked through the door right after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some primer on Meiji era clothing: essentially, Meiji was when the Western sphere of influence came by to pressure Japan into doing things favourable to them. The Emperor of Japan (and in turn, Japanese society) was forced to adapt to the Western ideals of civilisation (otherwise hello, colonisation!) - and one of the easiest way to adapt is to start wearing Western fashion.
> 
> Except that imported fashion is expensive, so what happened instead was people bought one or two articles of clothings with their limited money (like a shirt, or a dapper hat) and wore it under or over their traditional Japanese clothing, up until the fashion slowly changed to be more Western.
> 
> Thing is, if the Land of Fire is the most influential of all the countries, then it happened the other way round - that's why you have Japanese dress filtering to other countries (in an attempt for me to justify Kishimoto's cultural hegemony across countries with different climates and circumstances lol). So Meiji-era fashion in this fic didn't quite occur because of external forces pressuring them to become more civilised, but more because some random diplomat went to the Land of Lightning and came back sporting their fashion and they all were like YEP fashion fad time. Just a very far reaching one, since the daimyo gave his subtle approval.
> 
> And that's my justification for Meiji-punk fashion in alternate Konoha. 
> 
> Some links if you're interested, especially for Kakashi's appearance:  
> [ Iruka and Kakashi in various colorful modern Meiji punk fashion](https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=manga&illust_id=64324604)  
> [Meiji Punk Fashions](http://ladylibrarian123.blogspot.com/2014/02/east-meets-west-meijipunk-fashions-in.html?m=1)
> 
> I have the next few chapters written out, and will try my best to update it as regularly as I can. The fic is plotted out, I just need to um. write it out? Hahaha
> 
> Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this fic!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to drel and cassie!
> 
> I'm really happy that everyone seems to be liking this so far - so without further ado, chapter two!

Iruka’s routine was simple.

Every morning, he watched the sunrise. It was the minor things about being alive that he missed: the cool breeze ruffling his hair, the scrape of his  _ zori _ against the ground, the sun-warmed wood of the window frame against his fingers. Now everything was dull, detached - like a thin film of glass covered his entire body, allowing him to only see and hear his surroundings. It took a fair bit of concentration to break that film, to touch and move something, and even then it never felt quite enough.

Then again, that was the point of death, of being a ghost. The afterlife wasn’t meant to feel like life itself; otherwise, no one would move on, would they?

So Iruka took his time to watch the sunrise before checking in on the dogs (mostly asleep) in the hall. Sometimes he left with the ghost dog at his heels, but sometimes not. The morning calm lent itself easily to the pretense that she was still part of the pack, asleep with her family. He made his rounds, ensuring things were in their proper places - the single stub of broken chalk on the ledge of the blackboard - before retreating into the room that used to be a library.

In the afternoon, when the sun reached its zenith in the sky, the dogs shook themselves awake and headed out to roam Konoha for food. They picked their way across the wasteland of the  _ genkan _ with expert ease, and Iruka was honestly impressed enough to open the sliding door of the main entrance for them, every time. His fellow ghost would trot up to him for a scratch behind the ear both of them could barely feel before she ran out after them, past the chain-link fence and wooden sign declaring the area off-limits in blocky script - easily ignored by any troublemaker worth their salt.

He longed to follow them as they gamboled down the hill and out of sight - but Iruka knew the rules well by now: he could only go as far as the  _ genkan _ . Attempting to breach his boundaries had only ever resulted in pushing against a wall, invisible and unyielding.

The dogs returned by early evening, and Iruka slid the door closed after them. Evening was also when most trespassers attempted their incursions, the angle of the sun casting long shadows conducive to figments of an overly active imagination. These attempts Iruka thoroughly thwarted by appearing to them as an irate teacher, ready with a lecture about endangering themselves.

As for repeat offenders… well. There was a reason for the rumors floating around about the third floor of the old academy being haunted.

At night, with all amorous couples and children bluffing at courage chased safely away, Iruka folded himself as small as spirits could go, suppressing his presence as much as possible. The dogs might be safe in the hall, but Iruka was not safe with them. He changed his hiding spot every night, waiting for the sun to rise, and hoped that today was not the day that he would be found.

And then the cycle repeated.

* * *

Iruka felt the moment Kakashi clambered through the window and entered the academy. There was no surprise - Iruka figured that Kakashi would be back for another attempt. Even so, immediately escorting him out of the premises was bound to raise several questions - like how Iruka knew he was here - so instead Iruka settled down to wait. He would accost Kakashi at a more appropriate time, and as long as Kakashi stuck to the first floor Iruka had little reason to intervene. 

And so far Kakashi did just that, poking around the classrooms and empty janitor closets. Iruka kept track of him as he wandered to the far end of the school, to the room that once kept sports equipment in cages, now empty and rusted with time. He moved to the restrooms next. Restrooms apparently lost gender designations once they were dilapidated and potentially haunted, but Iruka honestly doubted Kakashi wanted to take a piss in a place without flowing water.

Maybe Kakashi really was here on the Sarutobis’ behalf. Even so, conducting such a thorough inspection was unnecessary, and the meticulous care taken in checking every room uncalled for. Iruka trailed after him, unseen, as Kakashi gingerly stepped over a board blackened with rot and came to a stop before the staircase. He eyed the landing speculatively for a good minute before he finally turned away and headed for the hall.

Hopefully, that would be the end of it. The first floor was clearly dilapidated beyond repair. Send in the demolition crew and call it a day.

But where would Iruka go if the building was demolished? Maybe the boundaries would be destroyed, and Iruka would be free to roam Konoha and look for Naruto. But if they were destroyed then  _ his _ boundaries would be too, and the effects of that…

No. That was unacceptable.

Shaking his head, Iruka materialized in front of the door. There was only so much time left before night fell. He stepped into the hall, a remonstrance on his lips, to find Kakashi, true to expectations, feeding the dogs.

“Are those pork ribs?” Iruka blurted out instead.

Kakashi blinked, a rib falling out of his hand. A brief scuffle occurred, in which one dog emerged victorious. She scampered into the corner with her prize. 

“Yes?” Iruka heard Kakashi say, but Iruka was staring at the paper bag of pork ribs in his hand.

Kakashi probably bought it from some roadside vendor, maybe the one at the foot of the hill where Iruka used to hold his breath and pass it by as a kid. The orphanage never had enough funds for each kid to buy snacks for themselves; his hunger only ever felt worse with the smoke from the grill wafting through his nose and into his stomach. In fact, barbecued pork ribs had been one of the few things he bought with his first paycheck as a teacher, alongside a bowl of ramen from Teuchi’s stall. The stickiness of the sauce between his fingers had been a small price to pay for the accomplishment of standing on his own two feet.

The rib in Kakashi’s hand was equally tantalizing, and Iruka could almost remember: the scent of smoke and spices clinging to the ribs, the scrape of teeth against bone, the way the meat slid right off and melted onto the tongue. How every attempt to eat the ribs cleanly always ended in messy failure; the barbecue sauce, smokey and sweet, smearing across his mouth and chin and dripping thick and sticky down his palm and wrist, and Iruka would lick at the trail to chase the last of the flavor off his fingers.

He could almost smell it. He could almost taste it.

He  _ really _ wanted some pork ribs.

“Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi said cautiously.

Iruka tore his gaze away from the rib with tremendous effort, dragging it up to Kakashi’s bemused face. Swooning over pork ribs was not normal. Even if it had been so terribly long since Iruka had any - any food, for that matter.

“Did you,” Iruka said hoarsely. “Did you buy pork ribs just to feed the dogs here?”

“They can’t survive on just dog biscuits,” Kakashi shrugged.

“That’s,” Iruka said. “Kakashi-san - “

“Would you like some?” Kakashi tilted the bag towards Iruka, and Iruka’s breath caught at the sauce glistening on the curve of the bone. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Oh gods, did he want some.

“No,” Iruka said with great difficulty and hoped Kakashi read it as him being utterly gobsmacked at the attempt at bribery by pork ribs. He wasn’t sure he would be able to eat it anyway, and he wouldn’t want to clean up the mess left behind by a pork rib falling through his incorporeal system and onto the floor. “I- no, thank you, Kakashi-san.”

“If you say so.” Kakashi fished out another rib and held it out to the dogs. They licked at it with admirable gusto. Even Iruka’s friend was attempting to slobber all over Kakashi’s hand, only to pass through it every time. “You can change your mind at any time.”

“I don’t think I will,” Iruka said faintly. “Kakashi-san, I thought I told you that this building is not safe.”

Kakashi hummed. “The dogs seem to be doing well here."

“They’re dogs.” 

“Exactly,” Kakashi gestured at said dogs, with a bone licked clean and shiny. The dogs followed the trajectory of his gestures with an avid eye - the smarter ones stared straight at the paper bag. “Animals - they won’t hang around any place that’s not safe.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s safe for humans,” Iruka rejoined dubiously. Kakashi offered the rib to a particularly insistent dog, who took it between his teeth and scurried away to gnaw at it. Some of the dogs turned to follow him but were distracted by the next rib Kakashi waved around. 

Iruka was equally distracted.

“I’m sure you’ll keep me safe, Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi was saying. Iruka had the wild thought that if Kakashi gave him one of those ribs, he’d make sure that not even a  _ splinter _ would touch Kakashi. “Another of your kids loose in the academy?”

“Yes,” Iruka said automatically. A random name, a random name - ah. Kakashi might know Konohamaru through his connection to Asuma, but probably not his friends. “I overheard Moegi’s plans to stay overnight as a test of courage.”

“Another brave child,” Kakashi said.

“I think Udon wants to prove something to her.” It had been true then, Udon vying for Moegi’s attention when she had been so very taken by Konohamaru’s boisterousness. He wondered how they were doing now - probably in their last year at the Academy.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. “I suppose he won’t get the chance?”

“He’ll get to prove how good he is at escorting her back to her house.” A crinkle of the eye that Iruka thought might just be a smile, and Iruka leaned in, almost as if he was about to tell Kakashi a secret. Kakashi mirrored him, and Iruka fixed him with a stern glare. “As good as me escorting you out of here.”

Kakashi sighed, but it didn’t sound particularly put out. 

“You could escort me to dinner?” Kakashi winked - blinked? - at him, and was he - was he really asking Iruka out to dinner in an abandoned school building?

“I have to find Moegi,” Iruka said firmly. “And - “

“I can’t accompany you, yes, yes.” Kakashi waved another rib, now clean, at him. “After?”

And Kakashi, for all that Iruka couldn’t see his face, had been nothing but charming so far with his insistence on feeding stray dogs in the most inconvenient of places. Iruka had half a mind to call him out. At this point, it was almost as if Kakashi was just using Asuma as an excuse. And asking Iruka out for dinner…

If Iruka were alive, he’d have said yes.

"Papers to mark,” he deflected. To his relief, Kakashi nodded and did not push any further. 

He wanted to say  _ perhaps another time _ , but Iruka was not in the habit of making commitments he couldn’t make, and raising questions he couldn’t answer. Better nip any feelings Kakashi might have in the bud right now - he’d heard enough stories of romances between ghosts and humans to know it never ended well.

Another rib gone, and the last rib in hand. To Iruka’s surprise, Kakashi let go the moment it was safely ensconced in a lucky dog’s mouth. She bounded away, victorious, her fellow dogs hot on her heels. 

Kakashi watched them run around the hall fondly as he stood up, wiping his fingers clean of dog drool. 

“Take me away, Iruka-sensei,” he said cheerfully.

This time, Iruka walked Kakashi to the door of the principal’s office. “I better not see you around when I leave, Kakashi-san,” he warned.

Kakashi only smiled at him - a crinkle of an eye, fond. “It’s too dangerous to wander around in the dark, sensei,” he quipped. “What if I break my neck?”

“Exactly,” Iruka said severely - and Kakashi reached out, touching him on the shoulder. 

The hand was light, a tap more than a tug. What surprised him was the sudden warmth seeping in deep under his skin. A watercolor painting of heat bleeding into and across his shoulder, bright and wide and breathtaking. Underneath, the firmness of Kakashi's fingers was grounding. Real, in a way. 

It had been so long since Iruka last felt warmth, the glass film dissolved like spun sugar in water under Kakashi’s mere touch, and he  _ ached _ .

Could he get Kakashi to grip his hand around Iruka’s wrist, or maybe even offer a hug? Perhaps this was why ghosts possess humans: to feel the exhilaration of someone who saw, who touched you - who knew you existed. That you were there.

“Be careful,” Kakashi requested. Iruka could only watch, spellbound, as he let go, ignorant of how he had affected Iruka so. Watching as Kakashi clambered out the window and into the overgrown field surrounding the school. The grass parted as he cut his way through, bending with the force of the wind Iruka could not feel. “See you around, Iruka-sensei!"

The warmth lingered on his skin. Iruka laid his hand over the imprint of warmth, absently, gently. It felt nothing like Kakashi’s hand; it felt only like glass, smooth and sterile.

“I said, I don’t want to see you around here!” He finally shouted after Kakashi’s retreating figure, who only waved without glancing back. 

* * *

That night, he thought of Naruto.

If Iruka had any regrets, they had always revolved around Naruto. He met Naruto half a year into his tenure as a teacher, and Naruto had been a downright terror: barely any manners or discipline instilled into the boy. Teachers before Iruka shook their heads, murmuring about those who cannot be taught - Iruka himself had been tempted to ignore Naruto in favor of teaching the rest, those who were more willing to learn.

It would have certainly been easier, but Hiruzen remarked wistfully to Iruka once, when Iruka was less seeking his advice and more asking for permission to unload all his teaching woes onto him. Naruto reminded him of someone who had no parents, someone who had acted out in hopes of anyone seeing him.

It took patience Iruka never thought he had, and an incredible amount of yelling. Attention rarely resulted in immediate obedience, not when Naruto had been trying to get attention desperately for so long. Still, at the very end, Iruka dared to think that they had something. There was the calm peace under the curtains of Teuchi’s stall, the ephemeral frustration and occasional (unexpressed) admiration arising from a harmless prank, the overfull warmth in Iruka’s chest as he wondered, sometimes, if this was what it was like having a little brother. Naruto had been less rambunctious and more willing to attend Iruka’s classes when Iruka would chase after him and drag him back, and while he certainly whined loudly about all the lectures he received, the smile plastered across his face belied his words.

And Iruka regretted not being kinder from the start, for not seeing someone who had suffered as much as he had, perhaps longer - as much as he regretted how Naruto dragged his body down the staircase of the old academy, Iruka’s blood seeping into the back of his  _ yukata _ .

It had been the summer festival, that day.

Iruka had promised to bring him to the festival. He never said it out loud, but he promised to give Naruto memories of a happy childhood, of candy apples and grilled squid and fireworks exploding loud and brilliant in the night sky. But instead, Naruto had blood on his hands, his hair, his clothes, the weight of Iruka’s too-heavy body slipping off his shoulders - the death rattle of Iruka’s breaths next to his ear.

_ It’s not your fault _ , Iruka had whispered with whatever strength he had left. Every flight of stairs had felt painful, yet painless - sensation floating far, far away.  _ Naruto, it’s not your fault _ .

Naruto had told him to shut up and conserve his strength, in the high-pitched and breathless voice of a child clinging to truths: that people screamed in the presence of a bug, that ramen was always delicious warm, that a teacher, a brother, would ruffle their hair for the rest of their lives. Iruka would have chastised him for his language, entirely too coarse for a child of twelve years, but he supposed that there was no better time to be cursing.

He also knew by then that he would not make it, not even to the door.

Iruka died in the  _ genkan _ , falling silent and still as Naruto yelled at him to talk, to breathe, to not die on him. The last regret Iruka ever had was failing to fight against his own bodily functions, to relieve Naruto from the weight of Iruka’s death hanging over him for the rest of his life.

He woke up in the ruins of the old academy. Naruto never came back.

(Iruka didn’t blame him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is actually an excuse for me to go find food and taste it in the name of research. Pork ribs mmmmmmmmmm. This particular pork ribs is barbeque pork ribs, with that tasty tasty barbeque sauce.
> 
> Please do not feed dogs random food though honestly, because all that barbeque sauce probably is not good for the dogs. (the dogs in fic love it though!)
> 
> Zori - (or actually, zouri). Similar to flip-flops but made of sterner material, such as lacquered wood or leather. At first I thought of making Iruka wear a geta (an elevated flipflop) but I was also thinking a teacher won't really need a geta to elevate themselves from the mess wrought by children. Can't escape that even with a geta.
> 
> Genkan - a traditional entryway for a building. In this particular building, the genkan used to have shelves for keeping shoes a la high school anime style.
> 
> Also can you tell how much of a sucker I am for Iruka and Naruto's relationship can you


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delayed update - life decided to take a wide swing at me, what with all the readings and revision I had to do. Law school, amirite?
> 
> Thanks again to drel and cassie for helping me streamline my thoughts when I wrote this! Please, enjoy: ghostly shenanigans, more food porn, and more dogs.

The following afternoon, the skies opened up to a light shower of rain. 

Iruka liked the rain. Rainy days meant no trespassers - even the most foolhardy of thrill-seekers avoided coming to the old academy in such weather. Iruka himself took the opportunity to close his eyes and listen to the patter of droplets against the building, to pretend at another rainy day of marking essays with a warm cup of tea. If he pretended hard enough, he could almost hear Naruto snoring away on the battered couch behind him, freshly showered and cozied warm after playing in the rain. 

So frankly, it was incredibly rude for Kakashi to attempt his third incursion when Iruka didn’t expect it. 

Kakashi headed straight for the staircase to the second floor, and Iruka chastised himself. Of course Kakashi would want to avoid the overprotective school teacher preventing him from doing his job. In fact, he probably expected Iruka’s absence for the very same reason. 

It was also why he couldn’t appear to Kakashi until the rain stopped, especially if he wanted to talk to Kakashi in the evening. Thrice was always the most he could get away with talking to the living before suspicions arose - but maybe for Kakashi he could push it to four times. It was willfully blind of Iruka to go against his own rules, but maybe Kakashi would touch him again: a tap on the shoulder, perhaps a tug at the elbow. 

The extra risk would be worth it for that one moment of contact.

Nevertheless, Iruka had a job to do. He couldn’t long for the touch of a warm hand if its owner kept on trying to head upstairs against all warnings. 

He slipped down to the second floor, just in time for Kakashi to walk into the science room, named so if only for its anatomy model missing every organ save for its head. Iruka had managed to push it into clear view of the doorway: an effective initial scare for the especially jumpy. With the light filtering in bright and clear from the windows, it had less effect than intended - Kakashi himself seemed unfazed, having made no sound of surprise and coming out of the room mere minutes later. 

No matter. The greatest pranks were always the subtle ones. 

Iruka phased through the walls as Kakashi walked into the adjacent room. The head of the model twisted easily to look out into the corridor, its eyes unnervingly blank - a fairly reliable way to make anyone pause when they walked back down the corridor. The idea of the model turning to watch people as they left was always satisfyingly discomfiting.

Except Kakashi didn’t even seem to _notice_ the model when he finally emerged from the classroom at the end of the corridor. 

Now, if Iruka were any other person, he would have felt disgruntled - but the anatomy model was just a primer. A mere prelude to the other tricks up his sleeve - such as the girls' restroom. 

Now Iruka couldn’t fully claim credit for this particular trick, but a prankster always worked with what he had. And what he had was the girls' restroom on the second floor. In his time as a student, rumors flew abound about a girl who had hung herself in the very last cubicle, and how the silhouette of her swaying corpse could be seen in the mirror facing that last cubicle. As a ghost, the schoolboy in him was slightly disappointed to find the rumors false - but that didn’t stop him from painstakingly rigging a wire with scraps of dark cloth to effect the silhouette of something shifting in the darkness. 

And just for Kakashi’s earlier display of unflappability, Iruka decided to go the extra mile. He hooked himself up to the wire, untying his hair and letting it hang loosely in front of his face. All he had to do was wait in the dark for Kakashi to notice the reflection. 

Kakashi stepped into the restroom... and then left.

He didn’t even glance at the mirror! Kakashi spent at most one minute at the entrance before he turned back into the corridor and left Iruka hanging on the wire. Iruka even put his hair down for this!

It’s fine, Iruka told himself, trying to temper his rising indignance. Maybe Kakashi wasn’t from Konoha. Iruka certainly never saw him during his school years. He shouldn’t have relied on a local rumor, especially one passed around by students of a now-defunct school. 

This required a more direct approach. The music room would do just fine. 

While Iruka would sorely love to be able to emulate the rumors of a musical genius who (again) committed suicide in front of his beloved piano after playing a mournful dirge befitting of his (also false) death, said beloved piano was missing half of its keys. Also, the most Iruka could play is a pathetic rendition of 'I Look Up As I Walk' with one hand.

So he improvised. The music room, in full ostentatious splendor, had a wall lined with paintings of famous music composers from all corners of the five elemental nations, cracked and peeling with age. It had taken little effort to dig his hand into the fragile canvas and _drag_ , leaving the impression of faces clawed out by some _onryou_. The eyes remained intact - all the better to stare down at trespassers with, and when shrouded in the evening shadows most were discomfited into leaving.

But Iruka was realistic. Foreboding paintings surely wouldn’t be enough to scare Kakashi - but hiding behind the piano and slamming its lid shut as Kakashi turned around to leave certainly would.

It was out of pure habit that Iruka took off running (through the walls), an ingrained response to pulling off a prank. He slowed down when he realized that Kakashi wasn’t running away from a room that by all rights was haunted, and stopped entirely when he registered Kakashi _walking_ back down the corridor.

Walking. Not even walking briskly. Just taking his sweet time to walk away from a piano lid that just fell down by itself. Rubbing at the eye under his eyepatch, but otherwise entirely unaffected.

What on _earth_ would it take to scare Kakashi?

It was entirely out of petulance that Iruka yanked himself towards the first-floor entrance, slamming the door hard into its frame as the last dog bounded into the _genkan_. His fellow ghost slipped through the door, eyeing him dolefully, despite how she could pass through physical objects just fine. The sounds of dogs barking and scrambling over the ruins of shelves reverberated throughout the building - and it was because of _that_ and not Iruka’s own efforts Kakashi immediately headed down the stairs and unerringly towards the hall. 

“He’s terrible,” Iruka told her severely. “Just terrible.”

She _looked_ at him. It was clear who the terrible one was in her eyes.

“Traitor,” he said unhappily as she trotted off, clearly biased. She didn’t even look back at him as he floated off to sulk.

* * *

Iruka stalked through the second floor, scowling at his various failures of the day before finally deigning to head downstairs. Kakashi wouldn’t leave, not when he didn’t even recognize the signs of a haunting when it hit him in the face. To think the man asked about ghosts the first time they met!

“Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi greeted him from where he knelt on the floor, blithely unaware of Iruka’s disgruntlement. Not that he knew that Iruka was putting in effort, the prick.

“Kakashi-san.” Iruka didn’t even have to pretend to sigh. “Why did I know that you’d be here?”

The dogs were gathered around Kakashi again, jostling each other in a bid to be closest to his hand. Today’s treat of choice was spare ribs, simmered small and soft and grey, easily snapped up in one canine bite. They were almost certainly from the stall run by a couple from the Land of Rivers frequented by his parents when he was young, the accompanying peppery broth a warm and familiar friend on sick days. He had it less in his time at the orphanage, but it remained a nostalgic comfort food for whenever he was feeling under the weather.

Good thing Iruka mentally fortified himself before coming into the hall, knowing that Kakashi was not above buying actual meat to feed stray dogs. Otherwise, he might think about the soft give of the meat as he sucked it away from the rib, the crunch of cartilage under his teeth, or maybe even the broth poured over steaming bowls of fragrant rice for that extra added flavor…

Damn it.

“I told you that I would be?” Kakashi tossed a pork rib up into the air; a dog executed a perfect mid-air snatch. 

“You aren’t supposed to,” Iruka said, entirely exasperated. “Kakashi-san, really - “

“Are you sure I can’t interest you in some pork ribs?” 

“No,” Iruka said forcefully. He would not be bribed. He wasn’t even sure he could be bribed - in fact, his answer might change entirely if he could be bribed. 

A weak stance, true, but it didn’t matter when no one knew it was weak. 

“They’re really good." Kakashi shook the bag at him playfully. "I’ve had some.”

“No, thank you.” Iruka threw a hand up in frustration. He was at the end of his wits, he really was. “How do I convince you this building is not safe?”

Kakashi blinked. “I know it’s not safe,” he said. If only he would _act_ like it. “That’s why we’re demolishing it.”

“Then _why are you here_ ?” It was like dealing with a recalcitrant child, one that knew full well what they were doing was wrong, why it was wrong, and _doing it anyway_. Iruka’s canine friend whined sharply and skirted around the bulk of the rubble, tail tucked between her legs at his raised voice - but Iruka needed Kakashi to stop coming by, and outside of chasing the dogs away he couldn’t see how.

He couldn’t do that. The dogs knew what he was, incorporeal and insubstantial, and they had seen how he trembled on the rare times he chose to take refuge with them. They never approached him, not when he couldn’t give them food or pet their heads the way a living human could, but they stopped barking at him when they realized he meant them no harm.

“You’re scaring the dogs,” Kakashi said reproachfully. He stood up and moved over to his bag. The dogs all followed as one, a wave of tails surging after the possibility of more ribs. 

For one moment Iruka entertained the notion that Kakashi was finallylistening to him - but instead, Kakashi crouched down to rummage through his bag.

“I suppose I should be upfront with you.” Kakashi sighed as he turned back towards Iruka. 

In his hand was a paper plate and three pale sticks, tipped with red. It took a moment for Iruka to recognize them. When he did, it felt as if a breath he never took caught in his throat.

Kakashi was holding _incense sticks_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All ghostly antics lovingly borrowed from Japanese school ghost stories, as well as Singaporean ones.
> 
> I Look Up As I Walk: a lovely, lovely song by Sakamoto Kyu, better known in Western society as the 'Sukiyaki' song. The song had nothing to do with sukiyaki, or food, but sure gives you a nice warm feeling. Listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35DrtPlUbc). Since we're going with the Japanese cultural hegemony, I'm sure there's a song in this AU called 'Hamburgers' or something. 
> 
> Onryou: The Japanese term for a ghost capable of causing harm in the world of the living. Usually very vengeful and very murdery. Iruka (and the dog, maybe) as they are would be considered at most a yuurei.
> 
> Spare ribs simmered in peppery broth: this is actually [bak kut teh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bak_kut_teh), translated literally as pork bone tea. There are three varieties of Bak Kut Teh; this particular variety is the Teochew kind, nice and warm and peppery. I'm happy to report that I consumed some - in the name of research, of course :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of the comments! Quite a number of you seemed to think that Kakashi knows (dun dun dunn) that Iruka is a ghost. I suppose we'll find out this chapter how much he actually knows.
> 
> I wanted to post this up next week, not this week - but I felt that I wanted to respond to everyone who's engaging with this story so I pushed the schedule up by one week. So, hooray! :D

As a child, Iruka was no stranger to incense. His parents had brought him to the temple on several occasions, and Iruka had been fascinated by the patterns the smoke would trace into the air, white swirling into translucent white into thin air. People would hold thin bundles of burning incense sticks above their heads, trailing a winding trail of smoke as they walked by, and Iruka would hold tightly onto his own as he followed.

Incense sticks were meant for prayers, he knew, to the god or for the dead. Steeped in this knowledge, Iruka could only try to claw at understanding out of the resulting maelstrom of his emotions - the bare shock, the sheer terror. Because Iruka was dead, long dead, and Kakashi had incense sticks in his hand - that meant -

But Kakashi hadn’t said anything. Kakashi hadn’t said anything before Iruka confronted him, but still there was the chance that he would know. That he knew.

“Incense sticks?” Iruka forced the words out of his throat. He could only hope his clear confusion masked his inner turmoil. “Why would you..." 

“Not all dogs are alive,” Kakashi said cryptically.

Setting the bag of pork ribs onto the floor, he struck the match alight with a practiced hand. The pale ends of the incense sticks were set alight for one brief moment before they were extinguished by one firm flare of the wrist. The tips smoldered, orange and dim, and crumbled slowly, incrementally, into grey ashes and onto the floor; smoke curled lazily upwards, thin wisps of white twisting and rising before dissipating into the air.

Iruka watched as Kakashi knelt down and stuck the incense sticks red-ends first into a crack within the wooden floorboards. A faint scent of sandalwood pervaded Iruka's senses - from the incense sticks, he realized. Smoke and sandalwood; Iruka could smell it.

The dogs wagged their tails expectantly as Kakashi reached for the bag of pork ribs. They crowded around him as he tipped the remaining ribs out onto the paper plate and placed it before the incense sticks. 

Kakashi held them back with an arm. “This is for your friend,” he explained -

\- and looked straight at the dog, with her destroyed eye and blood-matted fur, as she peered around the pile of rubble she had taken refuge behind. The only other dead inhabitant of the school hall.

_ Kakashi can see the dog _ , Iruka reeled.  _ Kakashi can see the dead dog, he can see ghosts - _

She slinked forward, almost hesitant. A look around her, at all the dogs who had their rights to first bite but could not get past the barrier that was Kakashi’s arm. The ribs were hers, all hers, and they all watched as she sniffed at the pile of ribs, tongue darting out to swipe at her nose, as she opened her mouth to take a bite -

And stopped abruptly, turning to look at Iruka.

“What’s the matter?” Kakashi asked, his voice pitched low and soothing. She paid him no attention, backing away from the ribs. A bark, once, and she bounded past Iruka and through the door.

Iruka forced himself not to move as Kakashi turned to look at him.

“Kakashi-san,” he said, injecting as much confusion into his voice as possible. A decent emulation of Naruto when Iruka caught him hiding in the rafters of the storage room: an otherwise acceptable hiding spot from the most vengeful of prank victims, but not from a fellow prankster.

Hopefully, Iruka’s charade of life was still viable. If it still held true, then he doubted that Kakashi expected him to be able to see ghosts. Iruka was fairly sure that Kakashi had seen him as a human but never as a ghost: Iruka had never approached without materializing himself beforehand, and during Kakashi’s exploration of the second floor he kept out of sight by luck and habit.

Besides, if Kakashi knew that the dog was a ghost, then he should have declared Iruka a ghost already. Maybe this could still be salvaged - if Kakashi went around confirming the haunting of the old Academy building, even Iruka couldn’t stop the resulting stampede.

Kakashi stood back up, sporting a hangdog look as he stared after her. Behind him, the dogs gathered in a circle around the ribs, interested but somehow fully aware that the food was not meant for them.

“Iruka-sensei,” he finally said. “You do believe in ghosts?”

Iruka took a moment to deliberate on his answer before offering a wary, “yes."

“Sarutobi-san asked me to look at the old academy for any problems,” Kakashi informed him matter-of-factly. He paused, briefly, before continuing, “The problem is, there’s a ghost dog running around the school."

If any of his students - or anyone, for that matter - told Iruka that Sarutobi Asuma hired them to check the old academy and that they found a ghost dog, he would have called them out for lying.

Instead, he opted to say incredulously, “In addition to all the dogs that you’re already feeding?”

“Yes,” Kakashi confirmed.

What would one even  _ say _ in this situation? “How do you know this?"

Kakashi scratched at the back of his head, slightly consternated.

“I can see ghosts,” he finally admitted.

Iruka would have scoffed, loudly, if he didn’t know of its undeniable truth. He tried to look as though he was digesting whatever Kakashi just told him.

“So,” Iruka said slowly. “All this time I’ve been telling people the old academy isn’t haunted, it actually is haunted?”

“I’m afraid so, sensei,” Kakashi told him gravely, but the line of his shoulder was suddenly lighter, like a burden relieved. Maybe Iruka should have acted more skeptical, but it seemed petty to belittle or scorn Kakashi for what sounded like a lie but certainly was not.

“Right.” Iruka scrubbed at his eyes. Careful, careful - there was a balance between acceptance and disbelief to be struck. “Let’s say I believe you. Is that,” he gestured at the incense and pork ribs, "enough for your ghost? For the dog?”

“It would be,” Kakashi said. “But… I think it doesn’t like pork ribs?”

From the way his fellow ghost begged shamelessly for every other pork rib, Iruka thought she very much did.

“Maybe it’s picky,” he said off-handedly. “Anyway, look. If you appease this dog, will you stop coming back?”

“You’re letting me?”

“I think that no matter what I do, you’re going to attempt to feed a ghost dog,” Iruka said dryly. Besides, the school hall should be safe as long as Iruka chased him out by nightfall - which was soon. Iruka should chase him out soon. “As long as you don’t go wandering around upstairs. You haven’t seen any other ghosts, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.” Something tight uncoiled in Iruka’s gut - he was safe. For now. “No trips upstairs. Understood.”

Kakashi earnestly looked at him, affecting innocence, and Iruka would have believed him if he didn’t know better. In fact, Kakashi seemed entirely content to let Iruka think that he hadn’t been upstairs, that he had only been to the school hall, to lie by omission.

While Iruka couldn’t quite call him out on it, he wasn’t willing to let it go either.

“You haven’t been upstairs, have you, Kakashi-san.” His softest voice, almost menacing, usually reserved for the rowdiest of classes - it felt appropriate to use on Kakashi, right now.

“Ah,” Kakashi begun, automatically slouching backwards in an attempt to look far too casual.

“I’d be quite disappointed if you went upstairs despite me telling you not to,” Iruka continued.

“To be fair, sensei,” Kakashi hedged, “you’ve only told me to not go upstairs today.”

“So you did go upstairs,” Iruka pressed, unrelenting.

“I didn’t say that.” Kakashi asserted. Iruka fixed him with a piercing stare, conveying how unimpressed he was. “Ah. Maybe. I took a peek at the second floor?”

More than a peek, but an admission was good enough. If Iruka pressed any further, it might lead to defensiveness, or even suspicion. He opted to sigh instead, taking a less confrontational stance; Kakashi’s own shifted to reflect his.

“No more peeks, alright?” He said tiredly. Kakashi nodded, but Iruka pressed on. “You might think I’m being unreasonable, but the floors aren’t safe, and ever since they boarded all the windows up you can barely see where you’re stepping."

“I can be careful,” Kakashi protested.

“Or you could die,” Iruka said sharply. “People have  _ died _ , Kakashi-san,” Iruka included, "and I don’t want you to be one of them.”

Kakashi looked at him, considering, and Iruka wondered if he pushed too fast, too far. But as much as he liked talking to Kakashi, watching the dogs gather around him with adoration and wishing Kakashi would just reach out and touch him again, Iruka never forgot his duty.

He knew what would happen if he failed again.

“You knew them,” Kakashi said quietly. “The people who died here. That’s why you’re so intent on keeping people out of this place.”

He wasn’t wrong, not entirely off the mark. If Kakashi ever knew the truth, would he do the same for Iruka? Incense and pork ribs and a few kind words - Iruka might be touched, elated even - but it wouldn’t be enough to move on.

“I did,” Iruka confirmed. He wasn’t lying. “One of them, he’s… he was a friend."

“I’m sorry,” Kakashi murmured, but Iruka looked away instead, at the dying evening light strangled by the blanket of moss and vines hanging off the side of the school hall. He did not want to remember that night, not when he had to relive it every year. Being dead wasn’t enough, some cosmic power decided - if you must linger, you must suffer, over and over again.

“I think it’s time for you to leave, Kakashi-san,” Iruka said, final. To his relief, Kakashi followed him as Iruka led him back towards the principal’s office, to its open window. He turned around to find Kakashi rubbing again at his eyepatch, and Iruka felt a flash of concern over what he assumed to be an old injury, considering how Kakashi seemed to navigate through the school just fine with monocular vision. Even so, it might be entirely too private an injury to ask about on the third day of their acquaintance.

Besides, the sun was setting. There wasn’t much time left.

“Iruka-sensei.”

Iruka looked back at the mention of his name, just as a hand folded around his own.

Warmth suffused into his fingers and palm; as if Kakashi took his hand and gently trailed it through the waters of a hot spring, the heat leeching bone-deep exhaustion out of his muscles. Iruka looked down at their joined hands, struck breathless in this sudden influx of sensation, this burning spot of heat in the chilled stillness of the afterlife.

Kakashi’s hand pressed tightly into his, for one ephemeral moment, before letting go. Iruka struggled to control his face, to not lean over and snatch that hand, to hold it close. Hold it tight.

“I… Thank you.” Kakashi said, uncharacteristically solemn. "For looking out for everyone so far."

It left him off-balance, the world tilting on its axis as Kakashi uttered those words. Iruka’s duties were supposed to be nothing more than a thankless task. He had never expected any recognition for his efforts to keep people safe in the guise of disrupting their activities. The only reward had ever been another casualty avoided, another death thwarted.

To have someone thank him for protecting them, even if Kakashi did not and would never know the extent Iruka had gone to in order to protect those who entered…

It was a balm to wounds he never knew he had, a weight lifted off his back. Iruka had not needed to breathe for a long while now, but at this moment he felt as if he could breathe just the slightest bit easier.

“It’s the least I could do,” Iruka finally found the wits to say. Underneath that mask, he thought that Kakashi might just be smiling at him, gentle and understanding. Iruka wanted to reach out for that hand, to feel its warmth again - but that was not how it worked. “Run along, Kakashi-san.”

Kakashi nodded and left. Iruka watched him go as the sun sank lower into the horizon, lazy and languid. He curled his fingers into his palm, chasing the apparition of warmth - in his hand, in his heart.

“Thank you,” Iruka whispered, knowing fully well its recipient could not hear him - but he meant it sincerely. He meant it true.

* * *

That night, he lingered in the hall.

It was a risk, but Iruka wasn't strong enough to keep away from the scent of sandalwood and smoke. It pulled at him, hypnotic - a splash of olfactory color in the dullness of the afterlife - and for every inch the sticks crumbled away, Iruka mourned the impending cessation of sensation.

The pork ribs remained untouched in its little pile. A hint of pepper, meat and spices warm and varied wafted from the pile - but it was overshadowed by an intangible sense of restriction, a foreboding blanket draping heavy over Iruka as he approached the plate.

_ This is not yours _ , it seemed to say.  _ Do not touch _ .

A warning both Iruka and the dogs still living heeded, even though the rightful owner had yet to return to the hall.

Iruka didn’t know where she had gone or why she ran away the moment the food she had been begging for all along was offered to her. In fact, there was another human who could see her, feed her and offer her scratches - not the pale imitations that Iruka provided, but actual fingers digging into skin and dragging repeatedly over any itches she might have. Hell, it was an explosion of sensation when Kakashi  _ touched _ Iruka - Iruka couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like for her.

And Iruka wanted her to be happy, he really did. She kept him sane for the past year, when he was close to breaking down and giving up. Maybe it was terrible of Iruka to be so grateful that she died just then, probably by some accident within Konoha, left unmourned. The death of a stray dog was a nuisance to people at best - and rarely anyone would make offerings for a dead stray.

(Except for Kakashi, it seemed. Persistent in his kindness, infuriating in his lackadaisical charm. Warm in Iruka's hand.)

That was why he refrained from accusing Kakashi a liar, even though that would have been the expected outcome. For all that Iruka appreciated her companionship, he didn’t want to deny her the chance of moving on, of leaving this sham of a life when she could be reincarnated into something - or someone - better. If Kakashi could deliver that to her, then well. Iruka was not going to stop him.

Of course, that was if she would just  _ accept _ the offerings.

The last of the smoke curled up into the air as the incense sticks burnt to their very ends. The very moment the scent faded away from the hall, a mad scramble occurred as the dogs converged on the remaining ribs, its term of protection clearly expired. The smear of grey dust across their muzzles was no deterrent in the quest for the remaining pork ribs.

With all the chaos wrought by dogs enthusiastically attempting to claim their rightful share, Iruka almost missed her slinking back into the hall, tail tucked between her legs. She ambled over to Iruka, setting her head down on the slope of his thigh, and peered up at him for a scratch behind her ears with one hopeful eye. Iruka smiled down at her - how could he not? - and obliged.

“You should have had those ribs,” he told her, his finger smoothing over the curve of her skull. “They smelled divine.”

She whined, turning her head away.

“There’s still tomorrow,” He assured her absently, his fingers reaching under to tickle at her chin. Kakashi would return, if only to help her. “I thought you liked pork ribs, but I’m sure he’ll bring something as tasty tomorrow.”

Another whine. Iruka patted her once more, before easing her head off his lap and standing up.

“I’m off to hide now.” One last scratch behind her ear. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She was safe here, they all were - but he didn’t want to impose. His problems were his own, and it was only right to keep it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main religions in Japan are Shintoism and Buddhism, but I have to admit that religion in this particular fic is being played with extremely fast and loose, courtesy of my own mess of a heritage: a mix of buddhism, taoism, and ghost hunting stories set in asia. So... detailed rites and rituals are probably not going to be portrayed accurately in this fic.
> 
> So I hope that cleared up whether Kakashi knows that Iruka is a ghost! :D


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I present to you: more food porn, more dogs, and more Iruka (and the author) being a hungry, hungry ghost.

Over the next few days, Kakashi returned with offerings.

The first day, he brought a bag of grilled pork skewers. The Land of Rice Paddies might be small in the grand scale of international politics, but their cuisine was unparalleled and their pork skewers were only a _piece_ of the delicious parcel. Grilled to firm perfection yet soft to the bite, every sliver of fat hidden between marinated meat _oozed_ flavor. Even merely touching the wooden skewers left a lingering smell of coconut milk marinade that clung to the fingers, a lingering want for another bite, another skewer, more. With a packet of freshly steamed sticky rice, the pork skewers often made a filling breakfast whenever Iruka decided to make a detour in the morning before work.

The following day, the dogs were treated to grilled pork neck. Tougher than the pork skewers, yet tenderer than jerkies, the meat was chewy and the flavor strong where charred. Iruka fondly recalled gathering around a cramped table with Kotetsu and Izumo. Fingers sprinkled red with roasted red pepper flakes as they dipped each piece into the _jaew_ \- a sauce where the galangal, fish sauce, and lime competed for prominence on the tongue, spicy and salty and sour and sweet. Kakashi chose to forego the sauce, a sound decision when Iruka remembered copious sneezing as being part of the experience. The dogs would not enjoy the sauce as he did.

The next day, instead of the pork Kakashi offered them chicken: _kawa_ , to be exact, a type of yakitori. Crisped brown where it rested against a grill and soft and springy where it remained clear and white, the fatty oils released from the grilled chicken skin were divinely decadent against a splash of lime. Iruka was almost sorrowful that Kakashi forwent the grilled _negi_ \- the stinging sharp yet sweet bite of green onion cut a sharp complement against the rich flavor of chicken.

Kakashi brought an entire buffet to the stray dogs in the old academy hall, Iruka's drool mere collateral in his campaign against canine starvation. The man offered him a piece every single time, and it took all of Iruka's willpower and rationality to reject him over and over. _You can’t eat it anyway_ became a mantra as familiar as the door creaking open heralding Kakashi’s arrival. A sound that set every dog lunging to their feet.

If he could, though. If he could…

His stomach gave another twist, more naked want than hunger pains. Iruka swallowed down his intense urge to reach out for a skewer himself. That way lay madness; he certainly felt close enough.

The most galling part of it all was how the intended recipient refused each and every offering. Oh, she’d beg like the best of them when Kakashi scattered the bulk of the meat to his adoring followers. The moment the incense stick was lit, however, she would turn tail and run straight out of the hall without a glance backward.

Iruka didn’t know why, even when she returned to the hall after Kakashi's eventual departure and the last of the incense burnt away. The oppressive pressure of the first offering never returned, but he wasn't about to tempt it when every scrap of meat was meant for the dog. It was crass to partake in an offering made exclusively to her.

For all her demands for pats on the head, she had always been more of a companion than a pet. It was for that very reason that he never named her; she had never been his to name.

Today Kakashi didn't even need to light the incense. The moment he started to rummage through his bag, she was out of the door like a shot. Kakashi ironically resembled a kicked puppy after each rejection. 

"Another failure?" Iruka asked, taking his cues from Kakashi's body language.

He had been very careful to maintain the act of a skeptical believer, and so far Kakashi seemed to harbor no suspicion. If anything, he seemed to have taken Iruka's warnings to heart. It surprised Iruka more than it should have when Kakashi made a beeline for the hall every visit, not a single glance spared towards the staircase.

 _Thank you_ , Kakashi had said. Those words grew ever more genuine in the wake of his promise kept.

Kakashi only sighed in reply, even as he went through the motions of lighting the incense and setting several curls of chicken skin at its base. The scent of _kawa_ , chicken and smoke, mingled with the sandalwood and wafted throughout the hall. Iruka gripped at the flare of his _hakama_ and steadied himself against the olfactory assault.

With daily exposure, it should have been easier to ignore the scents. To his despair, the smell of the various dishes grew ever stronger with every offering made, taunting his resolve.

"These dogs are close to being the most well-fed dogs in Konoha." He observed. Some of their coats certainly seemed to be glossier for it. "Even the pets in the Hyuuga district probably don't eat this well.” 

_Even I didn't eat this well when I was alive,_ Iruka refrained from saying.

"Every dog has its day." Kakashi quipped, though more morose than usual. "Say, sensei. If you were a ghost, what regrets would you have?"

Iruka paused. "If I was a ghost?" He repeated.

A nod. Iruka relaxed after a beat - Kakashi seemed intent on merely making conversation.

“Just...” Kakashi raised a hand to scratch at his chin, pondering. “If I was a ghost, I'd regret not reading the latest installment of Icha Icha."

Iruka’s reply was automatic. "You read that drivel?”

"It's an excellent series about self-discovery and determination!" Kakashi protested. An accurate depiction of the series, if Iruka was honest. Like how he must be honest about the way self-discovery in Icha Icha tended to take the pornographically scenic route, and its determination showcased through the pursuit of men, women and everyone in between.

"It's practically soft porn."

"My point still stands." He leaned in, looking almost conspiratorial. “Have you read it, sensei?"

Iruka had not. Kakashi immediately turned around to rummage in his bag.

" _No_ ," Iruka said as Kakashi extracted a tattered, worn copy of Icha Icha Paradise from his bag - its faded orange cover irreparably dog-eared, and its spine creased into jagged lines of white.

"Yes," Kakashi countered. He advanced towards Iruka, holding the book like an ancient manuscript of the _Hyakunin Isshu_ poems. The very notion was preposterous. "You wouldn't want to set a poor example for your students by being prejudiced, would you?"

"I'd be a poorer example if they knew I read such books!"

"They don't have to know," Kakashi cajoled. He was grinning beneath that mask. Iruka could _feel_ it. "Just once, sensei."

In any other circumstances, Iruka might have repudiated the book and all that it stood for thoroughly. He might also even point out that he wouldn’t be setting an example for his students if they didn’t know he was reading the book. However, the library upstairs had the one single tome, half of its pages torn out by young and clumsy hands, and Iruka could only read the unfinished adventures of Momotarou so many times.

"Only once," Iruka said firmly, taking the book from Kakashi and tucking it into his _obi_. It took a bit of concentration to hold it there, but it was better than leaving Kakashi’s book on a pile of rubble - even if the book was utter filth. To his relief, Kakashi refrained from making a huge fuss over his acceptance. He looked only bright-eyed and triumphant in his successful persuasion.

"I won’t tell if you reread it." He promised, winking with an exaggerated tilt of his head. “And I certainly won’t tell if you want the sequels.”

Iruka stared suspiciously at Kakashi's bag, previously unassuming and inoffensive and presently _not_. “You mean you carry around five books of erotica at all times?"

“Seven.” Kakashi corrected gleefully, unashamed. “I got the latest copy when I dropped by the capital.”

After seven days of acquaintance, Iruka had come to know Kakashi as a traveling merchant or handyman of sorts - even if he was slightly elusive on what sort of services he provided. Iruka’s inquiries had been waved aside with a cheerful ' _all sorts of odd jobs_ ', and ' _building demolition surveyors are in high demand, sensei_ '.

How many buildings had Kakashi found dogs in, dead or alive? Out of curiosity and a subtle pry for more information, Iruka had asked him if he ever found anything dead that was larger than a dog.

To Iruka’s consternation, Kakashi had nodded: he had once found a macaque.

While Iruka boggled at the thought of a ghost monkey, Kakashi explained further: apparently its owner had left it to starve, but it liked the offerings of grilled sweet potatoes just fine.

As for humans, Kakashi shrugged. Hauntings were a rarity, he admitted - and if there was one, someone usually called in an exorcist by then.

Iruka had refrained from pressing further - it seemed hypocritical to pursue the matter when he had his own secrets to keep. Let the conversation drift where it would. It helped that Kakashi was so very easy to speak to, telling Iruka about his travels all over the Land of Fire and beyond, to Wave and Wind and Water; of the waterfalls of Cloud and the grassy plains of Earth. Countries that Iruka had only ever taught his students about but would never go to.

Iruka himself regaled the man in turn with the antics of his students, of which Iruka had no shortage of anecdotes. Naturally, Naruto was often mentioned, if not by name then by his antics. Iruka did not have expected that talking about Naruto would feel so freeing, as if talking about the mischief the boy got up to could allow someone else to look at Naruto the way Iruka saw him - could allow for Iruka himself to forget for a while about the trauma he must have left Naruto with.

At least Kakashi had seemed amenable to listening, laughing at Naruto’s schemes and shaking his head at the excuses children came up with when put on the spot.

Where was Naruto now? Did he still remember Iruka? Iruka hoped that he left the memory of that night behind, but he knew better than to think that Naruto would.

“It might be Jiraiya-sensei’s best work yet." Kakashi declared, drawing Iruka’s attention back to the present. "You never did answer, sensei. If you were a ghost, would you have any regrets?"

The thought came to mind, immediate and unbidden: _Naruto._

"Ah, I don't know." He deflected. Talking about his regrets to Kakashi... it seemed inadvisable. Never mind that Iruka broke his own rule for not talking to Kakashi for more than four times. "I guess... my students? I won't be able to teach them."

"Truly a teacher."

"It is my job," Iruka returned drily. It _was_ his job. "What's this all about, anyway?"

Kakashi immediately went back to looking like a kicked puppy, the playful energy of moments prior all but gone. Iruka had the wild urge to commiserate by petting his wild head of silver hair.

“Maybe I'm going about this wrong," Kakashi admitted. "Usually an offering is sufficient."

Iruka had the sudden vision of Kakashi praying at the roadside for every dead stray he came across. He wouldn’t put it past the man.

"So what are you going to do?” It was genuine curiosity on Iruka's part - he did want to help. The anniversary of her death was only a mere month away; Iruka didn’t want her to relive that experience. Also, if Kakashi tried anything funny, he would at least have advance warning. "Since she's not eating your food.”

Kakashi mulled over his answer. When he finally spoke, his words were hesitant, halting.

"Ghosts usually mark something when they're haunting a space,” he said slowly. At Iruka’s confused look, he clarified. “Marks act like an anchor point for ghosts to stay within this plane of existence. Could be a person, an object - anything associated with feelings of regret on the ghosts’ end. So if you get rid of the mark, the ghost should be gone with it.”

“Get rid,” Iruka repeated. “Like destroy?”

(Or demolish entirely, wood falling in against wood and concrete and a decade’s worth of rot.)

Kakashi nodded, looking somewhat reluctant. “It’s a last resort,” he explained. “The spirit won’t be able to enter the cycle of reincarnation - they’ll just dissipate. No one knows where they go.”

Dissipation. Iruka never thought that there was a choice beyond staying or moving on. There were no manuals on the afterlife provided upon death. But it could be an end to his duties, of keeping people away and unaware and of hiding every night - an end to the terror of the possibility of failing again.

The way Kakashi spoke about it, as solemn as regrets confessed before a grave, dissipation was apparently something ghosts would want to avoid. But anything would be better than this limbo he had been in for the past few years.

The idea was terrifyingly seductive. All he had to do was convince Kakashi to approve the demolition without looking at the rest of the floors.

But the dog, his friend - she didn’t deserve such a fate. For all that she did for Iruka, curling up to him and pushing her face into his side as he dozed off on an uneventful day, it would be selfish to take her along where she had only ever wanted to be with her pack. She deserved another chance to meet them in another life, whether as dogs or cats or even as a human.

He would help her move on first. Then he would wait for the demolition. The thought of non-existence was not unfamiliar, perhaps even comforting; there was nothing to be scared of what lay beyond, not after death.

“So you’re going to find the mark then,” Iruka reiterated. Kakashi nodded again. “Is the demolition already scheduled?”

The switch in topic threw Kakashi for a visible second. “The demolition?”

“Yes,” Iruka said. That was why Kakashi is here in the first place, wasn’t it? “You said Sarutobi-san wants to demolish this Academy building? To,” what did he tell him again, “build public housing?”

“Yes, but,” Kakashi blinked. “Why -“

“I did say this place is dangerous, Kakashi-san,” Iruka reminded him. “It really ought to be demolished.” He laughed, and it felt so much lighter now that the end was finally, finally in sight. “I won’t have to chase people away every other day. When is it scheduled?”

There were those who believed teachers found their joy in corralling their unruly students. From the way Kakashi regarded him, Iruka suspected him of that very belief.

“The end of the month,” Kakashi finally revealed, shifting. If Iruka didn’t know better, he’d say the man looked discomfited. “I didn’t expect the job to take this long."

Two weeks away. His own death anniversary couldn’t be avoided, but that was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

“Then we’d best help the dog move on before that.” He smiled at Kakashi. Kakashi, who had been kind to dogs no one paid attention to, to a dead stray with no one to pray for her - to Iruka himself, for bringing him light at the end of a tunnel once so endless and dark. 

In another life, Iruka had thought. In this one, he would be content with just the memory of a warm hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grilled pork skewers: the Land of Rice Paddies where Sound is based has been claimed by me as Thailand. And thus, Thai cuisine. Thai grilled pork skewers, called _moo ping_ , is somewhat closer to the satays of the South-East Asian region - though the Thai satay is a sad dry yellow grilled pork skewers dumped liberally into peanut sauce by yours truly.
> 
> Grilled pork neck: again with the Thai cuisine, of a well-loved street dish called _kor moo yarng_. Eaten often with _jaew_ as the meat goes well with the explosion of flavor that is Thai cuisine. Apparently we believe in stuffing all five flavours into one dish because we can.
> 
> Yakitori: I am pleased to report that I ate yakitori in order to bring you this very important piece of research. _Kawa_ is translated directly is skin, and negi tastes great when boiled in sukiyaki or grilled until all the sharpness is gone.
> 
> Hyakunin Isshu: A classical Japanese anthology of a hundred poems, by a hundred poets. Most modernly known for its use with _karuta_. Chihayafuru is an awesome manga, just sayin'.
> 
> Macaques: While keeping monkeys as pets in Japan is not common, there has been a Japanese restaurant where the pet macaques worked as waiters in exchange for "tips" of soybeans, in an attempt to emulate their owners. That's where the ghost macaque came from.
> 
> Seems like I made it just in time for Kakashi's birthday (or so according to Ao3 who won't recognise that it's now Monday in my timezone), so hooray! No birthday celebration in this fic tho rip.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for... mature scenes. there's a reason this fic is rated M, and all.

"Hey."

He found her in the library. Iruka spent a fair amount of his time in the library over the recent years, the wide and open space allowing him the freedom to entertain himself when he wasn’t chasing off people. Entertainment for a ghost ranged from meditation to routines of aerobic exercises, the repetition of which revealed that he was unable to tire from physical movement.

On several occasions, Iruka did try renditioning a smattering of songs that he could recall the lyrics to. The dog acted as an enthusiastic duet partner at times, howling along to whatever off-key note Iruka produced.

It helped pass the time.

She was here now, tucked into the shadowy space behind an abandoned bookshelf. He sat down at the opening of the cranny. It took only a pat on his thigh for her to trot over and drape herself over his lap, belly up for scratches.

“Hey there,” Iruka said softly. She blinked lazily at him, imperious in her expectations - expectations he obliged.

They stayed there, his hand moving across her ribcage in circular movements, a soothing repetition. A moment suspended in time; light receded slowly from the room and the cicadas began to cry out from their perches in the distant woods. His fingers skirted around the wound scored into her flesh, exposed bone and sinew. A fatal blow. He thought that she might shy away from touches near her mortal wound - but she only shifted, pressing up into his hand. 

Kakashi left early today, a good half an hour before sunset, claiming that an appointment with an old friend. It struck a dissonant chord within Iruka to see him leave voluntarily, instead of waiting until Iruka escorted him out of the premises. His longing for warmth aside, Iruka had come to enjoy their conversations surrounded by dogs and incense. He allowed himself to entertain the thought that Kakashi might be unwilling to leave for reasons other than Iruka being a strict custodian.

Maybe Iruka forgot at times that Kakashi had a life outside of a school scheduled for demolition. But he couldn’t quite chastise himself for his carelessness when nothing would matter in two weeks. 

Two weeks to read the book Kakashi gave him. He drew it out into the evening light with one hand, absently curling his fingers into the scruff of her neck as he examined it. His grip on the book had slipped at some points, but ultimately he managed to hold onto it all the way up to the third floor. It would have been impolite to dirty the book by dropping it onto a stray pile of rubble.

For all that Kakashi had done for Iruka, reading the man’s favorite book seemed to be the least that Iruka could do. He would read it in the clear light of tomorrow morning - it wasn’t as if he had other plans.

But for now, Iruka set it aside and leaned over the prone form of the dog in his lap.

“He brought _kawa_ today,” he reminded her. She snorted and wriggled herself into a new position on his lap. “If you head down now, it’d still be there for you.”

She turned her head to stare at him balefully. He brushed a thumb over the arch of her skull, just above the ruined eye, and her other eye fluttered shut as her head lolled back onto the curve of his thigh.

“Don’t you want to move on?” The question was quiet and pleading. He wanted the best for her, he really did. “There’ll be chicken skin in your next life. Pork ribs, grilled pork, everything.” 

He worried at the flap of her ear between his fingers, a patch of dark fur against her grey coat, staring out at the window. It was getting ever darker, and he thought of the day he didn’t have to hide anymore. He wouldn’t have to do anything at all, after dissipating.

"Your pack, your friends - I’m sure you’ll meet them again someday.” His hand drifted as it scratched down her spine. He thought of his own parents and wondered if they had entered the cycle of reincarnation, or if they were watching over him. Perhaps they were proud that he was able to become a teacher; perhaps they might forgive him for not continuing the family line.

And his friends - Anko, Kotetsu, Izumo - he couldn’t imagine life without them. They had only ever watched out for him, and he for them.

He won’t see them again. The thought was disquieting, but nothing was lost, really. Even if Iruka were to reincarnate, he wouldn’t remember them. At present, Iruka was probably a fond childhood memory, someone gone before his time but otherwise appeased. A cause to visit the cemetery, where his ashes surely resided under his family grave.

“You won’t meet them if you remain here.” They both wouldn’t meet anyone, not as they were. He cupped her snout, turning it gently to meet his face. “Don’t you want to meet them again? All you have to do is accept the offerings.”

She licked at his palm, no dampness and all pressure. And maybe Iruka was foolish for believing it to be understanding, but maybe they understood each other after all they went through.

“Tomorrow, Kakashi-san will come by again,” he said. He stuttered over the last word as if a stone suddenly lodged itself sharp against the inside of his throat, present and hard. Iruka forced his next words out around its painful presence, syllable by syllable. “Tomorrow…”

He didn’t understand - he was the one who was encouraging her to move on, but - but -

“Tomorrow we’ll say farewell,” Iruka finally choked out. His eyes felt wet, a foreign feeling when he had not felt anything for a long time. He brought up a hand to touch them, but his fingers came away dry. 

The stone in his throat dragged downwards, scraping its way deep into the cavity of his chest and past his guts - but he was relieved, wasn’t he? She would be safe, and he’d be alone just for a moment, just for a while - and then it would be over.

It would be over.

“Tomorrow,” Iruka said again, the word weighed down with a finality he almost could not bear.

* * *

The following afternoon, Iruka saw her off as she ran after her pack into the streets of Konoha and headed up back into the library.

He was relieved to find Kakashi’s book untouched in the cranny behind the shelf. It was a risk to keep it with him during the night, especially when he expended all his energy towards hiding his presence. Book in hand, he settled in the armchair near the open window, its cloth moth-eaten and its frame exposed to the elements - but a chair, nonetheless.

It was telling how many times Kakashi had read the book, with the way it fell open - like legs, wide and easy. Iruka fervently hoped that he would not encounter any questionable stains.

The first page featured a navy flourish of the author’s signature. The dedication read, ‘ _For my biggest fan.’_

With the way Kakashi was all but thrusting the book into Iruka’s face, Iruka was not about to dispute that statement.

To Iruka’s genuine surprise, the book was actually decent. He wasn’t about to write home about its prose, which was purple more often than not, but the plot was enjoyable and the characterization of the main characters believable. Some minor characters suffered from stereotypes and one-dimensional portrayals, and the entirety of the cast seemed far too ready to jump into bed (or a bush, on certain occasions) with each other at a moment’s notice. In any case, it certainly wasn’t the disaster that the critics made it out to be.

It was the sex scenes that had the entirety of the Land of Fire in a tizzy. The incredible detail paid to the heaving bosoms and plunging cleavages, and the various erections encountered in increasing lengths and widths by the incredibly appreciative female lead (with the male lead’s erection inevitably the largest and most impressive of them all) made abundantly clear the author’s preferences. While the dialogue bordered on cheesy and the euphemisms numerous, some of the scenes were actually tender enough for Iruka to trace a finger slowly down the line of characters, to mouth the words to himself.

A rarity when inspiration took the author - the exception, sadly, and not the norm.

It’s boredom, he told himself, boredom that made him flip back to one of those very scenes. In it, the secondary pairing had fallen in bed together. Kaoru, a weary traveler with a dark past, and Isao, the young master of the tavern that the cast frequented. For most of the story, Isao wavered between his duty to his parents tethering him to the tavern and his increasing attraction to Kaoru, knowing that Kaoru refused to settle down while running from his demons.

The scene involved Kaoru undressing Isao before bed, gently sliding off their yukatas to pool at their feet in the silvery moonlight. It was their last night together - Kaoru would be leaving for the Middle Kingdom the next day. They both thought that they would be overtaken by urgency, for one last night of passion. A warm memory to last them through a cold night. Despite that, Kaoru chose instead to lay Isao on the bed. Taking him slowly, steadily. Almost as if he were dragging time itself with every thrust of his hips.

It picked up as it always did, but only after Isao cupped Kaoru’s face in his trembling hands and told him that no matter how far Kaoru ran, no matter from who, if he would let Isao be the shelter where he rested then Isao would be content.

It was also when Iruka realized with some mortification that ghosts were apparently capable of arousal.

Well, he _was_ reading erotica. To make matters worse, Kaoru was maybe possibly Iruka’s type - fair hair and a quick tongue. His prowess in bed clear even if it was fictional. Iruka didn’t think that he would get aroused either, not when he had been otherwise occupied in the past few years. Then again, he spent most of his energy on moving things around or making himself visible to people and not touching himself in ways both appropriate and inappropriate - and he wasn’t really considering this, was he?

He was. He really was.

He glanced out of the window, assessing. The sun hung low in the sky, its rays indolently shining across the expanse of Konoha, bathing the town in a late afternoon glow. The dogs had yet to return, and Kakashi’s own visit was far off. That meant Iruka had plenty of time for… other activities.

If either Kakashi or the dogs returned before schedule, then Iruka would be alerted to their presence, Iruka reasoned to himself. It was with this line of thought that he glanced surreptitiously out the window one last time before setting the book aside. Through the opening on the side of his _hakama_ and underneath the flap of his _kosode_ , he reached in and curled a hand around his clothed cock, a firm and half-erect weight resting against his palm.

_I’m really doing this_ , Iruka thought, half-exhilarated, and gave himself a brief stroke upwards.

It was a disappointment, that was what it was: the sensory equivalent of sliding your cock across the surface of a porcelain mug. Iruka bit at his lower lip, considering. It took a bit of concentration to break the barrier, so maybe…

He tried again, concentrating on the feeling in his hand. The tactile sensation became clearer - the space between his fingers, a hint of friction of cloth against the skin. Iruka’s breath hitched as he imagined Kaoru - lanky yet wiry, his hair pale and blonde, eyes dark with intent. Kaoru, leaning over him in this armchair, one hand on the back of the chair next to Iruka’s head and the other reaching into Iruka’s _hakama_ and slowly jerking him off.

He tried to strike a balance - half his brain on Kaoru, his features ever-changing with Iruka’s indecision. The other half attempted to concentrate so he could reap the benefits of his imagination. Sadly, despite all of his efforts, the only thing that appeared to be mounting was his frustration.

Maybe he should just give up and wait for his erection to cool off. There weren’t any baths for Iruka to attempt cold showers.

One last try. Iruka tried to concentrate on Kaoru’s face, on his hair, short and spiky and silver -

And suddenly it was Kakashi, pressed close to Iruka and looking down at him with a glint in his eye. Kakashi, smoke and sandalwood and a low murmur, next to Iruka’s ear.

_Iruka-sensei_ , he said, and Iruka involuntarily recalled the weight of his hand, the explosive firework of sensation. The heat of his fingers curled around Iruka’s hand. His mouth went dry at the thought of that warmth surrounding him, in him, and the next stroke he felt all too clearly to the rough of his palm. _Iruka_.

Breathless, Iruka imagined Kakashi leaning in, a finger hooking into the edge of his mask and dragging it down to put his mouth right next to the shell of Iruka’s ear. His hand moved faster, involuntary; his breath came quicker, anticipating. He felt exposed with the way his energy surged and spiked, declaring his activity to the entire world, but no one was here to see him, to hear him, to know what he was doing

"Kakashi," he gasped into the quiet of the room, emboldened. A shiver at both memory and imagination of a hand on his shoulder, gripping tight instead of a light touch, and the warmth, _oh_ , the warmth. "Ah - Kakashi -"

_Iruka,_ and Iruka shuddered into the tight circle of his hand, muffling a cry into the knuckle he shoved into his mouth.

He spent the next few minutes in a pleasant haze, head tilted up towards the ceiling and his breathing evening out. The good thing about being a ghost, Iruka reflected absently, was the lack of sticky substances for him to clean off. As drained of energy as he was, he was loathe to get up for anything at the moment.

He’d think about the implications of jerking off to Kakashi later. The mask, initially strange, did add a mystery of sorts to the man, but honestly, Iruka was far more charmed by his dedication to the dogs. Sappy, but true - surely Iruka could indulge a bit considering he was going to dissipate in two weeks.

And indulge he would, except he was suddenly very aware of a presence on the second floor. Human, alive, familiar -

_Kakashi_.

Kakashi was on the second floor. Kakashi was stepping onto the flight of stairs leading up to the third. Kakashi was here, and Iruka hadn’t realized in his distraction, arrogant in his ability to detect trespassers even in the throes of passion.

Any earlier thoughts of Kakashi - hair mussed, eye fond, the lean line of his body curving over Iruka’s own - they all vanished under the thundering repetition of Iruka’s brain: _he promised_.

_He promised, he promised_ \- but it didn’t matter with every step Kakashi took towards the third floor.

Two weeks didn’t matter when the danger was still present, still real.

Iruka stood up and strode towards the door. The book he stashed again in its hiding place with a flick of his hand - he’d have to return it to Kakashi later if Kakashi ever retained the nerve to return after what Iruka was about to put him through.

Feelings aside, Iruka had a job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: hahaha time for badly written icha icha  
> also me: oh no i'm invested in these two throwaway fictional characters within a work of fiction.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man i'm sorry for posting less lately. law school is murdering me.

The first thing Iruka did was to throw himself through the walls and into the stairwell.

As a student, he had thought himself ingenious for the trick. Get up early before the crack of dawn, nick a roll of double-sided tape from the supply room with a faulty lock, and cover an entire step in clear tape.

It took the smallest of efforts to throw someone off their stride: his victims often ran away when they regained their balance, far too aware of the rumors to avoid the third step lest a ghost grabbed you by the ankle. Only a few had the sense to look closely at the stairs. (If they weren’t falling face-first into them.)

It was the same trick now, except there was no one to sentence Iruka to detention. (He certainly didn’t miss that.)

The third floor was dark, shrouded in shadows cast by windows hastily boarded up. Dark enough for the eyes to need adjusting, and far too dark to see Iruka’s own ghostly hand rise up past the third step of the stairs, grab at Kakashi’s ankle and _yank_.

Kakashi’s weight pitched forward and Iruka quickly let go. He didn't need to stick around to see whether Kakashi would fall flat on his face.

This prank was done only when Kakashi ran away, never to return.

And Iruka tried, he really did. Pushing a chair clear across the room moments before Kakashi entered to inspect it, slamming the door shut behind him. Running down the length of the entire corridor before Kakashi turned the corner to find it empty, save for a flash of movement at the far end of the corridor. Hell, Iruka even resorted to faux-sobbing in a corner of a room in his best imitation of the love interest from the sappiest of Earthen drama series.

The weeping was particularly inspired by the character's overly dramatic reaction to the death of the heroine (still actually alive) - and the way Kakashi _walked_ sedately from room to room, nary a hitch in his stride.

And when Kakashi decided to enter another room across the hall instead of the one Iruka had been wailing his lungs off in...

Iruka let out the unearthliest shriek he could muster, his frustration lending well to its brief existence. This frustration only built, higher and higher, as the sun dipped lower towards the ground - as Kakashi left each room unruffled, unflappable.

Was Kakashi capable of only seeing the spirits of animals? Or was he completely disregarding all the blatantly supernatural happenings around him? Iruka was truly at a loss for his next trick to force Kakashi away from completing his circuit of the third floor - and, inevitably, the fourth.

Not again. Iruka had sworn to himself, never again -

He sat down underneath an abandoned desk, putting his head into his hands. What was he doing? He knew damned well Kakashi wouldn’t be scared by harmless pranks - Iruka had seen so for himself on the second floor. As if Kakashi would be frightened this time just because Iruka was _trying harder_.

Stubborn and stupid - that was Iruka in his obstinate refusal to accept the truth. It was... difficult for Iruka to admit to himself that he valued Kakashi’s companionship more than his own precautions. That he was clinging onto the hopeful notion that he could pretend, just a little longer.

That as long as Kakashi remained unaware of Iruka's true nature, they could meet again as amiable acquaintances. Perhaps even as friends.

Had Kakashi kept to his promise, maybe that possibility would have remained - but Kakashi had not. Had Iruka been able to scare Kakashi away, maybe he would have deluded himself that it remained still - but Iruka had not.

He could not. That was the truth.

The only thing left now was to prevent Kakashi from going any further. By any means necessary, he reminded himself grimly.

And if Iruka had to reveal himself and risk Kakashi telling the entirety of Konoha about the haunting of the old academy... Maybe they'd move the demolition up, and put Iruka out of his misery.

He spared a thought for the book, tucked away in the shadows of the library - he’d have to leave it in the hall with the dogs. Or maybe on the table of the principal’s office.

After this, there was no going back.

* * *

Iruka gathered himself into corporeality in front of the stairwell. It was only a matter of minutes before Kakashi walked back down the corridor at his leisurely pace. Before he noticed Iruka standing in the shadowed hallway.

Waiting for him.

“Iruka-sensei.” Kakashi came to a stop a few paces away from him. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but Iruka thought he sounded just a bit surprised.

“Kakashi-san.” Iruka might have been nothing more than an overly invested self-instated custodian to Kakashi, an obstacle or annoyance - but the words tore themselves out of his throat, low and accusing, “you _promised_.”

Gratifyingly, Kakashi did not defend himself with excuses.

Infuriatingly, he simply said, “I did.”

“I thought you understood.” If Iruka could feel his nails, they would be biting into the meat of his palm with how hard he was clenching his fists. It would have been easier if Kakashi had deflected, or took Iruka lightly. Instead, Kakashi looked as solemn as the moment he thanked Iruka for his care. Was that also a lie? “You said you understood.”

“I do,” Kakashi said. He stepped towards Iruka. "Iruka-sensei, you - "

“I told you people died here,” Iruka snarled over any reasons Kakashi might have. Five so far, just because Iruka was too slow, too complacent. Too much of a soft touch to do what needed to be done. “Would you make yourself one of that number?”

“I - “

What was the point of reiterating all the dangers if Kakashi would only blithely phased through them, a ghost to the walls of Iruka’s concerns? Why bother maintaining the charade? They had never been more than unwelcome guest and reluctant escort - so why did Iruka care?

And yet Iruka couldn't stop himself from feeling hurt.

All the anger, the disappointment, the bitterness of betrayal. He let all of his emotions spill out and press up against the confines of the hall, coloring the air darker, colder, foreboding.

If Kakashi could see ghosts, let there be no doubt.

“Would you?” Iruka repeated himself harshly: befitting of the ghost of the abandoned academy.

Surely Kakashi wouldn't stand fast in the face of a threat. It was one thing to feed a stray dog and another to lose a hand to a rabid hound - surely he would turn and run. Run and tell the Sarutobis to reschedule the demolition as quickly as they could, and Iruka wouldn’t have to feel disappointed with someone he shouldn’t have put his expectations onto.

He waited for the realization to flash in Kakashi’s eye. For anger at Iruka’s deception, for the sting of betrayal of Iruka pretending at what he could only want to be. But Kakashi merely stayed silent, as though he was considering his next course of action.

“Iruka-sensei,” he finally said, slow and measured. “You should know - you’re dead.”

_Finally_ , Iruka would have thought - except the exact phrasing that Kakashi used was entirely suspect, and with an incredibly conspicuous lack of confusion, shock, or any appropriate reaction to the realization that he had been spending time in the company of a ghost. Kakashi delivered those words in the tone of a doctor giving their diagnosis to an unaware patient.

“What,” Iruka said, the hard lines of his consonants dropping away in sheer bafflement.

“You’re a ghost, sensei,” Kakashi continued gravely. “This might come as a shock to you - “

“Of course I’m a ghost.” What part of this was supposed to be a shock? He was threatening Kakashi! “I’m dead.”

“Exactly,” Kakashi said, nodding. “You’re - wait.” He peered incredulously at Iruka, finally looking as confused as Iruka felt at this entirely unexpected turn of events. “You knew?”

“How can I _not_ know?" Iruka exclaimed.

“Some ghosts don’t realize they’re dead.” Kakashi protested. “You didn’t have any - I thought - why aren’t you eating the offerings?”

“Eat the offerings?” The very thought of it was _scandalizing_. “I don’t steal other people’s offerings! You left it for the dog - it’s rude!”

“Rude?” Kakashi repeated. “You - you won’t eat the offerings because it’s _rude_?”

“Yes!” It was the spiritual equivalent of snatching food away from another person’s plate - another person just as hungry as Iruka - and even worse, his friend! He wasn't going to snatch food away from her, even if she was a dog. “Do you expect me to snatch candy from a baby too?”

“What does a baby have to do with this?”

“It has to do with the fact that you expected me to eat someone else’s offerings!”

“It was yours!” Kakashi shouted. “I left it for you and for the dog!”

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Iruka shouted right back, and his stomach took the opportunity to mourn all the pork - grilled or boiled - he could have been eating. It had taken all his concentration to ignore the _buffet course_ Kakashi had been parading under his nose.

Kakashi spluttered. “I - I thought - I told you, I thought you didn’t know you were dead!”

“Well, I’m dead,” Iruka exclaimed. “Now you know!”

“Now I know!” Kakashi said right back, heatedly - and then paused. “Well. I mean. I knew for a while.”

The admission was immediately sobering. Maybe the question on his face was obvious, because Kakashi clarified, “I... my eye can see truths. Glamours, illusions - I can see through them.”

Iruka considered him dubiously. “Wouldn’t you have known from the start?” Kakashi tapped at his covered eye - oh, _that eye_. “Why cover it up then?”

Kakashi went quiet and still, his silence a tenser cousin to the comfortable companionship they usually shared in the hall below.

"I’m sorry,” Iruka realized, backtracking. “I mean -"

“It’s fine,” Kakashi shook his head. “It’s… it was a gift from a friend."

“I… I see." Iruka winced. Eyes were not generally given as a gift. Or given, ever. “So you took a look."

“I had my suspicions,” Kakashi admitted. “The eye confirmed them.” He smiled, and there was that flash of playfulness Iruka was familiar with in their short acquaintance together. “You’d have to be dead to miss Jiraiya-sensei’s latest masterpieces.”

Iruka couldn’t help it - despite the weight of the situation, he stifled a laugh before it could burst out. Kakashi looked affronted, but it was clearly a pretense. Perhaps it had to do with the relaxed lines of his shoulders, the exaggerated furrow of his brows, or the huff far too forceful to be sincere.

“Masterpieces,” Iruka shook his head - but his thoughts wandered back to how he never saw Kakashi raise that eyepatch, not even once. If Kakashi had taken a look, he had done it behind Iruka’s… “You saw my back then.”

Kakashi’s visible eye softened.

“I did,” he confirmed, ceasing his attempt at levity. “That's a lot of blood, sensei.”

Iruka offered him a grim smile. "Death isn't pretty."

"So it isn't," Kakashi agreed.

They regarded each other, human and ghost. All his fears about Kakashi running out and announcing to Konoha about the haunting of the old Academy seemed unwarranted in hindsight, when Kakashi had been nothing but kind to the dogs, and apparently incredibly considerate to Iruka’s feelings. Not knowing he was dead, _really_. 

“So. I'm a ghost.” Iruka cocked his head. "What now?"

Kakashi blinked slowly. “You could eat the offerings.”

"I could," Iruka acknowledged. “I’ll move on when I eat it?”

Kakashi nodded. A passing fancy struck Iruka: maybe he could ask Kakashi for a bowl of Teuchi’s ramen. Kakashi wasn’t likely to refuse a request for a last meal. He gave himself a moment to revel in that thought, before letting it go. It wouldn't happen.

Not when the fourth floor hung above them like a guillotine's blade.

"I could wait until the demolition,” he suggested instead, pitching his voice deceptively casual. "Just in case there's more trespassers."

_Like you_ , he didn’t say, offering his opinion as a sardonic smile.

The gesture landed flat. Kakashi frowned at Iruka, the furrow of his brow reminiscent of the day before when he explained about ghosts and marks, about dissipation.

"You'd wait," he repeated. Not quite confusion, not quite surprise.

“Might as well finish my job,” Iruka reasoned. Was his tone too flippant for this? “Keep people away until there’s nothing to keep them away from."

Kakashi did not answer, not immediately. That usual laxness in his posture was gone, replaced by something intent and analyzing. It was a foreign sight to see the languid lines of Kakashi's shoulder tense, the hooded gaze of his eye sharp and piercing.

And Iruka caught the exact moment his eye flicked to the stairs.

"Iruka-sensei.” Kakashi’s voice was quiet. Terse. “What's on the fourth floor?"

“Empty rooms. Rotting floors.” Iruka answered. Automatic. Futile. An empty courtesy in this dance between them. “Nothing.”

“You've said that for the past two floors.” Kakashi pointed out, not unkindly.

Iruka raised his head. “And was I wrong?” He challenged.

“Not to the point where people have to be kept away.” Kakashi's tone was level, far removed from the light-hearted wheedling he often attempted. “Surely a quick look at the fourth floor won’t hurt - ”

Before Kakashi could finish that sentence, Iruka shifted to put himself squarely in the way.

“- unless you won’t let me.” Kakashi concluded. No surprise, no shock, just the calm statement of facts. Like he knew all along what Iruka would do.

“It was you on the other floors,” he continued. "The piano, the chair. All that sobbing and screaming.” A fleeting sense of triumph curled through Iruka, tempered only by the resultant futility of his attempts culminating with Kakashi standing before him. “I thought it was a poltergeist, but it was you. You chase people away from the Academy. And when they try to go up, you scare them off.”

“I’m a ghost,” Iruka reminded him coolly. “That’s what we _do_.”

Kakashi shook his head. “There’s a difference between hauntings and pranks. It’s all in the intent - wanting people to see you, wanting people to leave. Wanting people to suffer as you have.”

His eye bored into Iruka, and Iruka wondered if Kakashi really needed an eye that could see truths when it felt like he was looking right through Iruka. Into him.

“You don’t want any of that, Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi told him, almost gentle.

“You don’t know that.” Iruka's words were a defensive lash against the bulwark of Kakashi's convictions about Iruka, about his character. What did Kakashi know - what could Kakashi know? Iruka swallowed, his throat suddenly dry and painful - damn his voice, unsteady as he spoke. “I want you to leave.”

“You don't,” Kakashi asserted. “You don’t want me to leave, sensei. But you don’t want me to stay, not after night falls.” He stepped close, and closer. “And something tells me that if I go to the fourth floor, I’ll find out why.”

He would. He would find out, and he would die for it.

(Never again.)

“No,” Iruka said forcefully. “I want you to leave, Kakashi-san.”

“Iruka - “

"Leave!" Iruka snapped.

He swept his arm forward, gathering energy dark and tangible around him and directed it at Kakashi. The rush of air slammed into Kakashi, who staggered back from the force of it. There was a grim satisfaction to be had in finally receiving a reaction: an arm raised up, an eye widened.

To some students, an unyielding teacher was the villain of their story. It was a part familiar to Iruka; if he had to be the villain for Kakashi, then so be it.

“Leave,” Iruka snarled again, stepping forward and into his role. He lashed out at Kakashi’s feet, and the sharpened rush of his intent tore through rotting wood. It scored a line across the floor, long and vicious: a warning shot.

Something in him faltered at how deep the mark was - but no. He tamped it down, his resolve a crushing weight bearing down onto any hesitation he retained. Death by Iruka’s hand was preferable to what awaited Kakashi on the fourth floor.

Iruka needed only to convince himself first.

“Leave.” One last time, like he meant it. Iruka did mean it. He had to. "Or I will kill you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those of you who guessed that Kakashi knew that Iruka was dead, but didn't know that he knew he was dead, congrats! But I'm fairly sure that I laid down so many hints for it to be obvious enough. I certainly hope it was a satisfactory revelation!
> 
> Also if it wasn't obvious: the third floor is actually a red herring - the extent of Iruka's domain. It's the fourth floor that has the real things, as Eastern Asian ghost stories often do - the number four sounds like death in both Chinese and Japanese (for the on'yomi reading). 
> 
> I'll try to update this once a month, but it's nonstop projects all layered upon each other. Hopefully when finals are over I can sit down and write out the story full and proper.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is... very late. Apologies to everyone - I said a month, then I took more than a month - but as I explained to a commenter, I actually write out several chapters before I publish them, in an effort to incentivise myself to actually write new chapters out.
> 
> The latest chapter that I'm working on is coming along, but I do have a series of other commitments I didn't think I would have after my finals exams were done. I think I might have to review my approach of "wait til this event is done then write" because it doesn't seem to be working out at all.
> 
> Again, thank you for your patience, and happy holidays to all of you. Shout out to cassie who told me i've improved in my writing (and i am happy to hear that from her) and to drel as always for being a great sounding board.

" _Leave. Or I will kill you._ "

* * *

In the wake of Iruka’s declaration, there was silence. Kakashi regained his footing, a slow slide of the foot across the floor. His eye, wary, trained on Iruka. 

Iruka would no doubt regret this wariness, this shuttering of the gates on an avenue of companionship. The return of loneliness - unceasing, suffocating. Still, between losing Kakashi to death or by Iruka’s own actions, the latter was indisputably preferable. 

Where results remained the same, all that mattered was the method.

But Kakashi did not turn tail to run, nor did he cower. Instead, he stood his ground, stubborn. Persistent. 

Still here.

“As I said,” he finally said. His words quiet, yet resounding in the silence between them; his gaze, firm and resolute. “It’s all in the intent.”

Grit his teeth and curl his fist. Iruka would show him _intent_.

A pressure gathered around Iruka’s hand. He let it press, tight and tighter, his need for Kakashi to leave folded within layers of intent. A blow, hard enough to bruise but not to cut. 

For all of his assertion of Iruka’s non-murderous inclinations, at least Kakashi had the sense to sidestep the attack. Yet he continued to talk, as though he believed that Iruka could still be reasoned with.

“There’s something on the fourth floor.” He said. “Something you don’t want people to see.”

A scoff was all the warning Iruka gave before he sliced at the space next to Kakashi. A deep groove carved itself into the wooden walls, a slash of where it could have been on a body. A clear and undeniable display of Iruka’s intention to harm. 

And yet, and yet - as Iruka knew he would, Kakashi ignored it.

“You won’t move on because of it.” He paused, correcting himself: “You can’t.” 

A step forward. Iruka made a sharp motion towards Kakashi’s feet; Kakashi wisely retreated before Iruka could rip through the flesh and tendons of his toes. 

The next one, Iruka made himself promise. The next one had to land. Not the legs, not the abdomen - perhaps the shoulder. If he injured Kakashi, Kakashi would surely be less willing to stick around and negotiate with someone who had little qualms about hurting him. 

“What are you hiding up there?” Kakashi asked, unrelenting. “What could be so bad you refuse to talk about it? Why do you need to go so far to hide it?"

Why did Kakashi want to know? What could he do? This wasn’t a problem that could be solved by incense and offerings. The first person had tried to solve this damn problem that way; he never came back down.

Iruka wasn’t going to let him try. He raised his hand, _straight for the shoulder -_

The rush of intent towards Kakashi felt slow, the moments stretching like a drop of honey away from the curve of a spoon. Where Iruka was sure that Kakashi would move, or at the very least suffer a nick to the meat of his shoulder and a blow to his pride, his confidence quickly drained away when he noticed Kakashi’s feet planted firmly onto the ground. 

Kakashi did not intend to move, he realized. Regret rushed into the space where Iruka’s certainty had been - into the hollowed space of his need to hurt Kakashi in order to convince him. He didn’t want to - he really didn’t - and even though Kakashi was unreceptive to words maybe Iruka should have tried harder, he should have -

 _Move_ , Iruka would have shouted - but the words were nascent, burning in the base of his throat. _Don’t just stand there, move -_

_Snap._

The umbrella raised upwards, flicked forward. The waxed paper canopy gleamed as it spread open, the spokes sliding up and into space, and with a flourish it blocked Kakashi from sight. 

Just in time to take the brunt of Iruka’s attack. 

The sound of paper tearing apart, or of wooden spokes splintering under irrepressible force - neither of them came. Instead, the umbrella remained intact. Unmarred, even.

That couldn’t be. The wooden panels of the floor, as weakened as they were, were surely made of sterner material than paper. Iruka had _carved_ a mark through them. 

Did he miss? He probably missed. He readied himself to try again, as the umbrella was raised upwards to reveal -

Kakashi, gone.

Kakashi was gone - the umbrella was gone. 

Iruka looked wildly around him. A grown man with an umbrella could not just disappear from the middle of a narrow hallway. His senses told him that Kakashi was still within the school, on this very floor, but Iruka couldn’t see or feel where he had gone, where, _where_ -

The creak of a floorboard behind him. 

Iruka spun around and threw himself forwards. To all eyes the space was empty. He half-expected to crash onto the ground, to raise himself up and see the brief flash of Kakashi’s boots as he rounded his way up the landing and to the fourth floor and out of Iruka’s reach. To fail again. 

But then there was the impact of tackling _something_. Invisible yet tangible - and Kakashi snapped into clear view under Iruka the next moment. 

They landed hard onto the floor, a distance away from the stairs. The umbrella flew out of Kakashi’s hand and into a nearby wall, clattering down the corridor. And before Kakashi could make an attempt for the umbrella, Iruka grabbed him by the collar of his kimono and shook him, hard.

“Just leave, damn you,” he shouted into Kakashi’s face.

Iruka was trying to hurt him. Iruka had lied to him, from the very beginning of their acquaintance. He needed Kakashi to leave, because hurting him was so very easy now that Kakashi was beneath his hands - hurt him and let him run, and let the building crumble apart with Iruka within.

But maybe Iruka had enough. Of subterfuge, of intention hidden behind intention and trying to get Kakashi to read one for the other. He gripped the fabric in his hands, the patterns crumpling under his touch, and demanded, “why won't you _leave_?”

And instead of pushing Iruka off him, Kakashi reached up to hold Iruka by his wrists. Warmth stole up his arms, inch by luxuriating inch; unprepared for the sudden onslaught of heat, Iruka’s grip could only loosen.

“Because I can help,” Kakashi answered. 

He looked up into Iruka’s face, their noses inches away from each other. Perhaps it was only Iruka’s imagination, but with their close proximity the heat intensified, like the space between them was drenched in unrelenting sunshine. Scouring away his fears.

For one breathless moment, he almost felt alive again. 

“I can help you." Quietly, softly. Perhaps even gently.

It felt impossible to say no. Iruka had to. He had to.

"You can't." The words felt feeble, faint. Warmth washed over his hands like the rolling tide up onto a sandy beach, and his conviction ebbed away with each wave. "You really can't."

Kakashi would go up there and he'd die, he reminded himself shakily. Another missing person to add to Konoha's list of disappearances. Another weight on Iruka's conscience, another burden on Iruka’s guilt.

"You'll die, don't you understand?" The fabric bunched up under his hands. "It's not worth it." _I'm not worth it_. "Just demolish the building. Let me dissipate."

"But aren't you scared?" Kakashi asked. His hands slipped down to curl over Iruka's own, each point of contact a soothing balm over tense muscles. "Do you really want to dissipate?"

"I do." He did, he did, he _did_. Iruka looked down at his clenched hands, his knuckles white and strained. He just wanted this to _end_. "I do."

"Iruka." At that tone, he jerked his head up to look at Kakashi. Staring at Iruka, steady and calm. "Do you really?"

Something told Iruka that if he answered ‘yes’, Kakashi would listen. He would pat at Iruka's hand and tell him he understood, and they would walk back down to the first floor. Kakashi would feed the dogs whatever he brought this time, and they would make light conversation before leaving. And it would repeat, over and over, until the day of the demolition. Until Iruka dissipated, until he disappeared. 

Kakashi would be safe. Konoha would be safe. The safest ending, and for Iruka, an end. 

But for all of his reasoning, he couldn’t get his mouth to utter that word. And though Iruka was holding Kakashi down, it was Kakashi’s gaze that sliced him open, past everything Iruka had been telling himself in an effort of self-persuasion. Past his attempts at martyrdom, his denial of his crushing loneliness.

Because, despite everything, Iruka was selfish. He was selfish the way wisteria was selfish, winding upwards around an unfortunate tree as it strained towards the sun. The way an outcast child was selfish, pushing their clumsy way into a clique even if they were deeply unwanted. And now bubbling to the surface were his wants for things he kept on telling himself were unreasonable, unnecessary, impossible - wants he had crushed down under an unforgiving heel, the only remainder being wistful disappointment. 

He wanted to see the sights Kakashi had described to him, fantastic and foreign. He wanted to taste the food Kakashi had been laying before him. He wanted to see his family, his friends - Naruto. 

He wanted to see all of them again. 

“No.” Past the defenses he put in place to protect himself, Iruka forced out the words. Each syllable dragged out reluctant and unwilling, scraping sharp against the walls of his throat. "I... I don't."

His shoulders shook as he finally admitted the truth. Flayed open, all his vulnerabilities exposed for the world to see like a fruit rotting under the sun, and Iruka just... he was just...

He was tired. 

"I don't," he whispered. 

Kakashi reached up, splaying his hand over the curve of Iruka’s shoulder. Warmth bloomed beneath his touch, content and comforting like slipping under the _kotatsu_ ; Iruka could only follow, pressed down under the gentle weight of that palm. The shudder of his body, framed by Kakashi's arms.

"So let me help you," Kakashi murmured into the space between them. "Please."

Asking for permission to help. Iruka laughed weakly, a wet sound despite the absence of tears to shed. 

How Kakashi could possibly help him? Iruka didn’t know - but in the same beat, he thought, would it be so bad to let Kakashi try? He could tell Kakashi everything. The thought of being able to talk to someone about all he’s been through was a relief of its own. 

Maybe Kakashi would fail, but maybe he would succeed - but Iruka would never know until he trusted him to try. 

"You'll die," he said again. One last chance for Kakashi to leave, one last attempt for Iruka to assuage his guilt before it was overtaken by hope. "He'll kill you."

Kakashi did not tell him, _I won’t_. “I can be careful.” He promised instead. “I will be."

Iruka closed his eyes. "Fine."

He tugged at his wrist, and Kakashi let go. The heat faded as his fingers fell away from the curve of Iruka’s wrist, and Iruka tried to not mourn its passing - at least, not visibly. Any thoughts of asking Kakashi to touch him again seemed crass, especially after what Iruka did in the morning - 

The thought was _mortifying_ the moment Iruka recalled it. He scrambled off Kakashi all the quicker when he realized the intimate position they were in. This would be the worst time to find out whether ghosts were capable of blushing, but the chill stealing up his cheeks might be an accurate indication.

If Kakashi noticed his haste, he made no mention of it. Instead, he gingerly got to his feet, a hand rising to adjust at his mask. 

"Tell me about the fourth floor," he requested.

Iruka opened his mouth -

“I thought you were going to kill him, Iruka.”

The constant prickling at the back of his mind erupted into chills, its sharp and frozen claws raking sharp down the line of his back. The air grew thicker, heavier, like a waterlogged blanket draped across Iruka's shoulder. It slid down his arms like molasses, like an unwanted caress. Squeezing, constricting; it wrapped around his chest like a vice - choking the breath he didn’t need out of him.

And Kakashi reacted in a way he never reacted to Iruka: his shoulders, stiffened; his hand, flexing at his side. His eye, narrowed, looking at something behind Iruka. 

No. Not something. Someone.

“I guess I have to do everything for you, hm?” A laugh, low and soft. Familiar and all too terrifying. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind. We’re best friends, aren’t we?"

No - not after that night, not for the past few years, not now -

Slowly, ever so slowly, Iruka turned around. 

“Mizuki,” he breathed out, as his entire body screamed at him to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone and everyone who guessed that Mizuki was on the fourth floor, you are entirely correct. You get a pork rib.
> 
> Also, if you love kakairu, please come check out [! A forum for you to discuss all things kakairu (and then some.)](https://kakairu.rocks/)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> splashes through the surface of the water like a whale as though i hadn't been putting this off for three weeks
> 
> gonna be honest i had this written for a while now, then i rewrote and added more, and then i wouldn't post it until i could write the chapter after the next out - which i just did a few days ago
> 
> the update schedule is likely to get sporadic so i'm holding myself to the promise of you can post this up when and only when u write the next chapter otherwise this is never gonna end. at least i get around to answering comments now...
> 
> anyway here goes: a blast to the past.

They were friends, once. Best friends. 

They met in the blurry haze of elementary school: running through fields of kunai grass and wiping blood off the shallow scratches across their calves. Jumping across wooden beams separated by the deepest of imaginary ravines. Walking home together in the warmth of the setting sun. 

Iruka’s first choice for a partner was always Mizuki, and Iruka his, their projects often rescued by Mizuki’s patient and steady hand. 

After Iruka’s parents died in the Great Fire, Mizuki saw him at his lowest, sorrowful and bitter and raging against the unfairness of the world; at his highest, running for his life from furious teachers and breathless from a prank executed spectacularly. He walked Iruka back to the orphanage, a home that Iruka refused to call a home, and went along with any prank Iruka would rope him into the next day, reluctant but always there.

That was Mizuki, to Iruka: always dependable, always there.

He was there as they graduated from middle school, and there still as Iruka stumbled through the labyrinth of puberty, grades, and romance that was high school. Mizuki patted Iruka’s back as he sobbed through the news of Shiranui-senpai accepting Namiashi’s confession, and after Morino Ibiki had rejected Iruka's own awkward confession by turning and walking out of the room without a word. His attempts at romance in the teaching college had not fared any better - his dates with Shizune ended with a thankfully amicable parting, and his inappropriate crush on Nara-sensei doomed since its very inception.

“There’s someone for you, Iruka,” Mizuki told him every time he ended up shit-faced on cheap sake on the floor of Mizuki’s apartment. “You just have to look harder. Sometimes they could even be next to you.”

“I am looking,” Iruka moaned against the ratty carpet. The patterns would be pressed into his face by the following morning. 

“Not hard enough,” Mizuki said dismissively, but let Iruka sob into his shoulder the rest of the night.

Iruka got his teaching certificate first. Anko dragged him out for a night at the bar, along with the rest of their friends. Mizuki had come along, more sullen than happy for Iruka - but Iruka couldn’t really blame him, not when he missed the cut-off point by a few marks.

“Guess a bar’s a good place to look harder as any,” he slurred as he draped himself over Mizuki, pleasantly buzzed from all the shots Anko shoved into his hand. 

Mizuki scowled, in no mood to be distracted from his failure. “If you want sloppy seconds, then sure,” he commented acerbically.

“Sloppy seconds are delicious,” Anko crowed over the din before dragging Iruka off to the bar. Iruka threw one last concerned glance at Mizuki before he had to contend with the immediately pressing problem of Anko’s weight pitching into him and sending them both sprawling across the floor.

It did lead to him meeting Inuzuka Hana. The whirlwind romance that ensued left him bereft in the wake of Hana’s ever-increasing commitment to her veterinary practice and explosive arguments over priorities.

“I give up on relationships,” Iruka said to Mizuki’s ceiling, tear tracks prickling as they dried on his cheeks. “Relationships are _terrible_. I’m going to live alone for the rest of my life.”

“You aren’t looking hard enough,” Mizuki repeated, the words treading their weary trail through the landscape of Iruka’s love life. Iruka groaned, long and loud, and flipped onto his stomach, staring at the legs of Mizuki’s kitchen table.

“I’m not going to look at all,” he said resolutely. He meant it too.

“Sure you aren’t,” Mizuki said, entirely patronizing. Iruka swiped half-heartedly at his ankle as he walked by.

And maybe Iruka did mean it in his heartbroken stupor, or maybe he didn’t. It didn’t matter, not when Naruto took up his time more than any boyfriend or girlfriend would. Besides hounding Naruto about his homework and scrambling after the messes he made in the wake of his often-explosive pranks, Iruka had taken it upon himself to provide Naruto things that he was never given as an orphan - pork ribs on the walk back to the orphanage, warm gloves in the impending chill of winter, a yukata for the upcoming summer festival in Naruto’s favourite colour. 

Of course, material things paled next to the times he sat next to Naruto and listened to him talk about his day, his problems, his dreams, over a steaming bowl (or several) of ramen. But they were things he wished for when he was a lonely child. He might as well provide what he knew he could.

Mizuki had not understood. 

“You’re coddling him.” The disapproval was almost tangible, especially after Iruka turned down yet another invitation to dinner this week. Still, Naruto scraped a pass on the latest test, and Iruka had promised him a bowl of ramen with an additional side of _chashu_ pork slices. “He _passed_ , Iruka. He didn’t do that well.”

“He tried his best,” Iruka reasoned. “That should be rewarded.”

“You’re rewarding him for _barely_ passing.” Mizuki pointed out. “Should you really be rewarding him for doing what he's supposed to do?"

Iruka never recalled ever disagreeing with Mizuki, not even when Mizuki told him that he didn’t like Hana and he didn’t think she was good for Iruka. Personally, Iruka thought it was due to his unfortunate phobia of dogs. Mizuki eventually would come around - only the break-up happened before he could.

Still - on this, he was firm. There was no way he could be anything but firm, not when he saw for himself how Naruto pored over the books, mouthing the words to himself, and the countless pages he filled in his chicken-scratch of a handwriting.

“He’s never passed before,” Iruka explained. “This is the peak of his achievements. I want him to realize that he can achieve even more when he puts in the effort to _try_.”

Mizuki looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You say that, but you’d treat him all the same if he failed. Don’t deny it."

Iruka opened his mouth to do just that, before closing it. 

“I probably would,” he admitted.

“Of course you would.” Mizuki shook his head, exasperated. “Anyway, couldn’t you have dinner with me tonight? You could tell him you already had plans."

Iruka could, but Naruto was riding off the high of achieving his highest score out of his entire history of tests. The emotions of children were ephemeral and all too intense - to wait for a time to celebrate, a time that was convenient, was a lesson that orphans learnt far too quickly. Naruto himself must have already learnt that lesson in some way, even if he yelled loud and exuberant when he saw his score. 

But still. 

“Next time,” Iruka promised. Mizuki’s lips twisted down towards a frown, hurt writ across his countenance, prompting to Iruka hastily add: “We can go to that new restaurant,” on the other side of town with its fare priced at almost a thousand ryous per dish, “if you want.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Mizuki finally acquiesced, and Iruka considered it the end of that.

A few days later, after a remedial class dedicated to going through the entire test, Iruka brought Naruto out for ramen yet again. There was a burgeoning fondness as Naruto went on about his day - particularly about physical education class, how fast he ran, almost as fast as Sasuke, and his woes about how the girls only cheered for the other boy but not Naruto. 

Iruka tactfully decided not to point out how most of them had crushes on Sasuke that all of the teachers could see from a mile away, and how Hinata was equally and clearly enamoured with Naruto but far too shy to say so.

 _Ah, young love_ , Iruka thought - right as Mizuki walked into the stall.

“Iruka,” Mizuki said, surprised. “Didn’t you say you were holding a remedial lesson?”

“It’s all done,” Iruka said cheerfully. “I’m just treating Naruto to some ramen. Naruto, greet Mizuki-sensei.”

“Good evening, Mizuki-sensei,” Naruto said as dutifully as he could with a mouth full of ramen.

“Naruto.” If Iruka didn’t know better he would have thought Mizuki displeased. “Did you pass another test?”

“No, but I’m gonna crush the next one,” Naruto declared loudly - after he’d swallowed down the noodles, thankfully. “Believe it!” 

“I’ll believe it when you can remember your order of operations,” Iruka reminded him dryly. He couldn’t help the small smile tugging at his lips as Naruto whined how _hard_ it was, and why couldn’t equations just be done in one direction like a normal sentence instead of jumping all over the place just because of a few random symbols and brackets.

"I thought you were done already,” Mizuki said, jolting Iruka out of his thoughts. 

There was something about his expression, a flatness of sorts in the line of his mouth. It disappeared as he turned to Naruto, all smiles. 

"It’s so nice of Iruka-sensei to treat you before the test, isn't it?” He said, in that polite tone only someone long acquainted with him would know as reserved. “You better make sure you do _really_ well to make it worth it since he’s giving up _so_ much of his spare time." 

Over Naruto’s sincere promises that he would, which both teachers knew would be incredibly unlikely to be upheld considering his general inaptitude for mathematics, it was hard not to notice Mizuki’s displeasure, as subtle as it was. Iruka racked his brains for any reason that Mizuki could possibly be upset about - 

Oh. He promised, didn’t he, that he would have dinner with Mizuki. It wasn’t as though they had settled on a day, what with Mizuki’s schedule and Iruka’s own commitments to his crop of mischief - but a promise was a promise.

“Mizuki,” Iruka said, slightly hesitant. “I didn’t - “

“It’s alright, Iruka,” Mizuki interrupted, his smile for all intent and purposes benign. Naruto fell silent, uncertain and confused. “It’s important for teachers to pay extra attention to troubled students after all.”

Naruto was clearly more than a troubled student at this point. It would be disingenuous for Iruka to assert otherwise.

“I can’t even hope to match Iruka-sensei,” Mizuki continued, leaning towards Naruto almost conspiringly. “He really spends _all_ of his time on each and every student, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” Naruto said slowly, his face scrunching up in an attempt to recall if Iruka paid as much attention to his classmates as he did to Naruto. “He spends the most time on me though!”

“Is that so.” 

“Mizuki,” Iruka said again. “Look - “

“Ah, it’s getting late,” Mizuki interrupted as he glanced at the dark sky outside. “Sorry for interrupting your meal, Iruka, Naruto. I’ll excuse myself and head home. Papers to mark, and all.”

He slanted a look at Iruka. “Tell me when you’re finally free, won’t you?”

 _That was - it had to mean_ \- Iruka stood up, the wooden stool scraping loud against the ground as he pushed it behind him. 

“But I am - I mean, we can,” he stuttered, his words rushing against one another to fix his mistake before it festered. “The restaurant - “

“It’s fine,” Mizuki said, viciously cheerful. “I heard it wasn’t that good anyway. I’ll see the both of you at school.”

“See you, Mizuki-sensei,” Naruto called out at his retreating back as he left the stall. “Hey, hey - Iruka-sensei, as I was saying…”

It took him some effort to listen to the rest of Naruto’s story, and then some to eat the remaining noodles in his bowl, which had turned oddly bland. (Naruto had been happy enough to scarf them down once Iruka made it clear he could have at them.) Mizuki was angry, and Iruka understood - he should have made some time for Mizuki, to go to dinner like he promised. 

In fact, he had told Hana the very same thing, before they broke up - what was the point of being together - or best friends, in this case - if they didn’t make time for each other?

Even so, for some reason, Iruka hesitated to talk to him, to apologise. Maybe it was because Iruka hated to see Mizuki angry, to feel the sharp steel beneath the silk of his tone - or maybe Iruka was a coward, too prideful to admit when he was wrong. 

Still. Eventually, inevitably, he went to Mizuki’s desk with an apology and a peace offering: his treat at Mizuki’s favourite sushi restaurant, with the expensive - but admittedly very delicious - _chirashizushi_. 

“You really hurt my feelings, Iruka,” Mizuki told him solemnly.

“I know,” Iruka said. His hands twisted into the fabric of his sleeves; it took a conscious effort to stop. “I’m sorry, Mizuki. I really am. I’ve been a terrible friend. Forgive me?”

Mizuki sighed. “Of course I will,” he said, and Iruka felt worse when he saw him smiling gently as though Iruka hadn’t put off apologising to him for an entire week. “I know you didn’t intend to hurt me. You were just being kind to Naruto.”

“I’ll do better in the future,” Iruka promised, and tried not to feel even guiltier for avoiding Mizuki - especially when Mizuki seemed to let the incident go entirely. There had been no anger and no snide comments over bites of yellowtail and salmon roe and perfectly seasoned rice.

Guilt was what led him to invite Mizuki out to dinner more often, almost thrice a week - and guilt all the same that made him withhold offers of ramen to Naruto after Iruka supervised the cleanup of another of Naruto’s spectacular pranks. Inexplicably, it felt monumentally easier to tell Naruto that he wasn’t free that night - but that if Naruto held off on the pranks until Friday (when Mizuki was scheduled to have dinner with Funeno-sensei), Iruka would be happy to treat him to Teuchi’s latest dish.

It was a compromise Naruto was willing to accept, all but vibrating throughout the next few days as he tried desperately hard to not act out and behave. Come Friday Iruka could see the ways his ears were pricked for the seven strikes of the gong heard across the village from the Uchiha quarters, a sound that heralded the end of the school week and the promised ramen.

Iruka should have expected better than it to go so smoothly.

“I was thinking that we could have the curry from the Earth stall,” Mizuki told Iruka as they were packing up for the day. “You like curry, don’t you?”

Iruka hummed agreeably. Earthen curry was thick and heavily spiced across all dishes, but Iruka’s favourite _vindaloo_ had an earthy dash of wine and the pungent scent of garlic infused along with all the other spices. The stall itself was generous with their heapings of mutton that all but melted on the tongue and hearty chunks of potatoes bobbing merrily in the thick sauce. The aroma of butter that rose from the freshly baked flatbread was only an encouragement for Iruka to swipe around the bowl for every last drop. 

It might be spicier than he was used to, but the stall also offered its signature beverage, _lassi_. White as snow and refreshingly cold and sour, it kept the spiciness of the curry at bay.

Yes, Iruka liked the curry.

“Just have to drop these papers off first,” Mizuki said, cutting through Iruka’s fond memories of spices and bread. “I’ll meet you by the gates.”

That stopped Iruka in his tracks. 

“You mean you want to eat it tonight?” He had not stammered, but his sudden hesitance had almost made him do so. "I thought… don’t you have a meeting with Funeno-sensei?”

“He had to rush off for some other appointment,” Mizuki informed him, and added with a dash of dismissive envy, “the life of a vice-principal is a busy one.”

“It is,” Iruka agreed faintly, unable to put a finger on why the conversation was filling him with dread. “Say, wouldn’t tomorrow be a better day? The stall’s on the other side of Konoha.”

“It’s Friday, Iruka, live a little,” Mizuki said, laughing. The laughter tapered off when he realised Iruka wasn’t laughing with him. He frowned at Iruka across the stack of papers in his arms. “Iruka?”

What was he afraid of? This was Mizuki. Mizuki had refused Iruka’s invitation before, on account of some business or another - surely he’d understand Iruka’s own refusal. Surely, surely - but it didn’t stop Iruka from feeling as though he tied a noose around his own neck when he said, “I’ve already made plans with someone else.”

Nothing changed in Mizuki’s expression, at least nothing visible. But Iruka could swear that there was something suddenly sharper, like spikes at the bottom of a hidden pit, the pointed tips sharp even if unseen.

“Oh. You didn’t tell me.” Mizuki cocked his head, curious. “Who?”

Iruka pasted on a smile, bland and nonchalant. “Oh, you know. Naruto.”

Perhaps he had hoped that Mizuki would say, _tomorrow’s fine, maybe lunch?_ or _Naruto again? Say hi to him for me,_ or perhaps even _if you don’t mind, maybe I could join the both of you -_

“Naruto,” Mizuki said instead, that peculiar flatness returning to his mouth, to his tone. 

“Yes, Naruto,” Iruka said, and continued what felt like blabbering even to himself: “I promised him ramen if he stayed out of trouble for this entire week, and he did - and I thought you’d be having dinner with Funeno-sensei - so I told him that I’d treat him to ramen on Friday."

Mizuki wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t even reacting, so Iruka offered, if a bit feebly, “we could have curry tomorrow for lunch - “

“I thought you promised me that you’d do better in the future,” he finally said.

Iruka’s next words caught in his throat. For all that he knew this was coming - because even if he had hoped and rationalised otherwise, somewhere deep inside him he knew that Mizuki wouldn’t be happy.

“I have been,” Iruka said. He had been frugal with his expenses in order to compensate for the amount of times he went out to eat with Mizuki, but he made an effort to go out and spend time with his friend. His best friend. “Mizuki - “

“You promised,” Mizuki repeated. “I can’t believe you, Iruka - you said…” He slammed the papers back onto his desk, and the edges on the side slightly creased. Iruka jumped, surprised at the loud sound it made in the pressing silence. “I should have expected this, shouldn’t I?”

“Expected what?” Iruka said - no, pleaded. It felt as though he was pleading, to a storm or a hurricane that was about to slam into his house and himself.

“Naruto,” Mizuki almost hissed, before he took in a deep breath. “I can’t believe - after all this time, you’d prioritise Naruto over me.”

“ _What_ ,” Iruka said, the word practically punched out of him. “What do you even mean, I prioritise Naruto - “

“You’re choosing him over me,” Mizuki said hotly - the angry sizzle of water landing on a frying pan on the stove. “You eat ramen with him once every week, why can’t you tell him you’ll eat with him tomorrow? Why me?”

When put like that, Iruka could. He could probably tell Naruto that something’s cropped up, that he had a dinner appointment with his best friend, and that he could have ramen with Naruto the following day. Naruto wouldn’t say no - would never say no - not when both Iruka and he had learnt the ways people would put them second, of rescheduling them over others to a more convenient date.

“Because I made plans with him first,” Iruka said firmly. “You told me that you’d be meeting with Funeno-sensei today, Mizuki - so I told him that I could have dinner with him today.”

It was a fair explanation. Iruka thought it was a fair explanation, so he was completely unprepared when Mizuki turned on him and accused him, “so you’re saying it’s my fault?”

“What?”

“That you had to schedule dinners when I’m free,” Mizuki said. “That I’m controlling you - “

Iruka spluttered, “I never said that!”

“Even though you’re the one choosing Naruto over me - “

“Can you stop saying that!” His voice raised, perhaps louder and harsher than he intended. Usually an asset in corralling an unruly class, but presently Iruka was at his wit’s end, at the limits of his patience, his abject confusion at Mizuki’s accusations boiling over into anger and frustration. “I’m so sick of this - you keep on saying that I’m choosing Naruto over you - I’m not!”

Mizuki looked at him, cold and dark and furious - before the next moment he held up his hands, contrite. Iruka blinked as Mizuki even took a step back, eyes wide, clearly surprised, perhaps even afraid. 

(And Iruka wondered if he imagined that ugly expression on his best friend’s face, those lips twisted into a condescending sneer.)

“Why do you have to shout?” Iruka stared blankly at him, the abrupt shift in tone taking Iruka by surprise. “I was just asking you - “

 _Asking!_ Iruka cut in, “You were _accusing_ me - “

“ - why you couldn’t reschedule dinner with Naruto,” Mizuki pushed. “And you’re blowing up over such a small thing?”

Iruka almost choked on the rage that bubbled up inside of him, at this blatant dismissal of his problems - but Mizuki continued, “you could have just told me earlier, when you actually made plans with him. I wouldn’t say no.”

“I _did_ tell you,” Iruka insisted hotly. “I told you I made plans with him - “

“But you only told me today,” Mizuki frowned, but there was that hesitance Iruka had seen in himself as though Mizuki was afraid of upsetting him. “Iruka, I tell you about all my plans in advance. I thought you’d at least afford me the same courtesy.”

Iruka’s throat clicked shut. Mizuki did tell him - but Iruka had chosen to not tell Mizuki about his plans with Naruto, because he was afraid that Mizuki would say no.

Why did he think Mizuki would say no?

Mizuki kept frowning at him, that exact expression when he was the bearer of bad news. The most memorable had been when Tonbo had tattled on Iruka to the then-principal for the prank involving his toupee, and the detention Iruka received for weeks. Concern and reluctance - Mizuki was concerned, concerned for a friend, and Iruka had shouted at him.

Gods, Iruka shouted at him. Shame flooded his cheeks as he realised how out of bounds he had acted - even though Mizuki was just asking...

“Iruka,” Mizuki said, hesitant, “I say this as your best friend, but you really have to control your temper. We’ve known each other for a long time, so I understand, but… Have you ever thought that this might be one of the reasons Hana broke up with you?”

The wound still fresh hurt plenty when salt was rubbed into it. Iruka could only jerk back, automatic. But Mizuki was right - he had been frustrated with Hana for her lack of commitment, but he wasn’t blameless in that entire affair. 

No one ever was.

“I…” Iruka stuttered. “I… Mizuki - “

“Go have dinner with Naruto.” Iruka flinched at the visible pause Mizuki took before reaching over to pat Iruka’s shoulder. “We’ll talk over curry tomorrow.” 

He smiled, slightly wistful, as he attempted to inject some levity into the situation: “They’re too delicious to close down any time soon, am I right?”

Iruka could only nod mutely as Mizuki packed up the rest of his things - his bag, the papers. 

“Tomorrow,” Mizuki repeated as both farewell and reminder, as he left the room and Iruka steeped in his shame, alone.

It didn’t take him an entire week this time around to apologise to Mizuki. Iruka always apologised in the end. He always did.

Because they were friends, best friends - so maybe Iruka never really noticed how Mizuki had always simmered whenever Iruka sighed to him about whoever he had his eye on. How uncomfortably close Mizuki hovered around Iruka, the tactility of his touches explained away by years of friendship. And maybe Iruka would have looked twice at the abrasive attitude Mizuki had for anything not worth his time: Iruka’s friends, Iruka’s partners, Naruto. 

Mizuki was always dependable, always there - and perhaps Iruka was beholden to feel the same after all this time, right up to the night of the summer festival when he plunged a knife into Iruka’s back and left him for dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Chirashizushi_ : say what you want about him but mizuki has _taste_. Chirashizushi literally means "scattered sushi" - essentially a bowl of sushi rice with raw fish on top. While the random hodgepodge of salmon, maguro (tuna), octopus, crabstick, tamago, cucumber chunks, shrimp roe and sometimes salmon roe is like, a party in the mouth, the best chirashizushi i ever had was in a hotel restaurant, with the highlight being the rice. god if i know what was put in there, but they seasoned it so nicely... i'm too broke to go back there tho. 
> 
> _Vindaloo_ : vindaloo curry is this oily, spicy and thick goodness. I have to admit I went to eat Indian food one day and then I ended up eating vindaloo, and then i ended up writing it into this chapter lmfaooo. It was great, amazing - though I'm far more familiar with fish head curry. And other types of curry, which I can't really name because I usually just ordered the Indian food of the week. (Indian food every Tuesday for lunch was great, I miss my old office so much?) 
> 
> Although I did mention flatbread, it's actually roti, not naan. There's something lovely about the crispy edges and the oiliness of the fried roti itself... alongside the curry... naan just doesn't quite hit it for me. But garlic naan smells _amazing_ i can tell you that.
> 
>  _Lassi_ : Lassi is lovely and cool and sour and sweet. There's also salty lassi, which I admittedly am not fond of, but mango lassi is looking to be the popular and usual alternative offered (at least, where I am.)
> 
> Back to our usually scheduled abandoned academy in the next update.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I guess I have to do everything for you, hm?” A laugh, low and soft. Familiar and all too terrifying. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind. We’re best friends, aren’t we?"_
> 
> _No - not after that night, not for the past few years, not now -_
> 
> _Slowly, ever so slowly, Iruka turned around._
> 
> _“Mizuki,” he breathed out, as his entire body screamed at him to run._

The absence of heat was not cold. It was simply the absence of heat.

Cold was the drag of chills down the length of Iruka's body, the onset of trembling in his hands. The emptiness of his chest, hollowed out and gaping, a vacuum that leached away at any composure he might have retained. 

All that remained was an overwhelming urge to run, to hide - to curl into himself in a dark corner and wait for the sun to rise.

“Iruka,” Mizuki greeted. Easily, casually. “Finally stopped running?”

Perched on the wooden railings of the staircase, Mizuki was but a pale silhouette in the darkness. He made no pretense at life: the spectral glow of his skin and hair denied shadows any purchase they would have otherwise found on someone alive. 

Only his mortal wounds were absent. The reason was obvious: no one liked to be reminded of how they died. 

Behind him, a dark fog gathered. It shifted and curled over his shoulders, tumbling down in a murky cascade towards the floor. Impossibly solid in the shadows of the corridor; foreboding.

(Iruka’s back throbbed.)

“You’ve always been good at that,” Mizuki continued. A slash of a smile, sharp and mirthless. “Hiding and running away. But you finally feel it, don’t you?”

He looked at Iruka, expectant. Iruka stared wide-eyed, wild-eyed, back at him - his thoughts still trapped in that whirlwind of terror to think about anything else.

When he finally did speak, his voice came out in a croak - “Feel what?” 

“The cold.” Mizuki's tone turned petulant. Plaintive, pitiful - the exact tone he had used when Iruka made plans without telling him. “I told you it was cold.”

Without asking _permission_ from him, Iruka would later come to realise.

“You never believed me.” The wood cracked and splintered under Mizuki's fingers as they dug into the railings. “Kept ignoring me, even when I begged…”

Darker, denser, the fog drew back and curled tight unto itself - before it unfurled and flowed outwards, again. A muscle tensing, relaxing; it crept towards Iruka, as though it was reaching out to him. 

No. Reaching _for_ him.

"Why, Iruka?" Mizuki asked, sounding so very wounded. "Why would you do this to someone who loves you?"

_Why would you do this if you loved me_ , Iruka would have shot back, but the words lodged themselves in his throat. For all he had done, Iruka had grown up with Mizuki - spent years with him, thinking he knew Mizuki as well as he knew himself. 

Maybe if he had been a better friend. Maybe if he looked harder, realised faster. Maybe if he had told Mizuki outright that he didn’t return his feelings...

Maybe, maybe, maybe - yet another regret he had.

There was the scuffle of a boot across the floor - Kakashi, Iruka realised, stepping up next to him. Iruka had almost forgotten him, in this hallway filled with the dead and their regrets. 

“That’s a lot of miasma,” Kakashi said lowly, putting a name to that roiling cloud of darkness. “You know him?”

Before Iruka could say _yes,_ or _I thought I did_ , Mizuki scoffed. 

“Of course he knows me,” he said. “I’m his best friend." The phrase ‘best friend’ had never been uttered more scathingly. "He'd go out and fuck around, and when his heart gets broken I'm the one who picks up the pieces.” 

Cheap sake and the dull weave of a ratty carpet - Iruka had thought them a sanctuary for his woes. The memories only burned now, a dull ache against his face, his skin - his heart.

“Then he'd do it all over again,” Mizuki continued, bitter, “and I'm the idiot who keeps on hoping for him to see me. Question is...” 

Here he turned his attention onto Kakashi. Eyes dark as flypaper, ice frozen across tar-slicked roads. “Who are _you_?”

Iruka's heart seized in his chest. He would have moved, should have moved, put himself between the two of them as though Mizuki would ignore Kakashi if Iruka blocked him from sight. Should have grabbed at any chance he could, if only to let Kakashi escape with his life.

But he couldn’t force his feet to move towards Mizuki when he’s been running from him all these years. Not with his legs stuck to the floor, loathe to take a step closer to Mizuki like the traitorous cowards that they were - the coward that Iruka truly was.

Woefully unaware of Iruka’s shortcomings, Kakashi tilted his head. 

"Eh, me?" He said lightly. "I'm just a building inspector."

How was he still so calm? Why wasn't he running away? Surely Kakashi knew that Mizuki would kill him. That languid predatory intent rolling off the specter, like a tiger amusedly watching its cornered prey - surely he could feel _that_.

Or maybe he did - and didn’t give a whit either way. Maybe he thought he could talk to Mizuki, like how he talked to Iruka despite the explicit threats Iruka made against his life.

"Kakashi-san," Iruka turned to him. "You have to - "

“You know him?” Mizuki interrupted hotly. His eyes flicked between the two of them. "You know each other."

"We do," Kakashi confirmed, brazenly casual in the face of danger. 

Contempt twisted the line of Mizuki's mouth into an ugly sneer. 

"All this time you've been avoiding me," he accused, "you've been talking to _someone else_?"

His shoulders shook, like it took an incredible force to keep them in place. But the miasma was far from still. It curled back into itself, coiling tight and tighter - before it bulged and spilled, sprawling out across the ground. A snake uncoiled, like a breath released.

“It's okay,” Mizuki said, as though he was forcing every word through a veneer of calmness. “It's okay. You were lonely. Oh, you'll deny it - you’ve always denied things about yourself.” 

He slipped down from the ruined railing and landed lightly on the floor. The miasma shifted with him, billowing and rising, blotting out the windows and darkening the shadowy corners of the corridor.

“But I know you, Iruka,” he breathed. “You’re cold and you’re lonely, and you’ll never admit it.” 

"I'm not." Iruka was _not_.

“But you are lonely,” Mizuki countered ruthlessly. “And you've felt how warm he is, haven't you?”

Iruka had, he had. How could he say no when he longed for that very warmth? Kakashi's hand on his own, Kakashi’s arm over his shoulder; Iruka would have drowned forever in the sensation. How he wished he could have held on just a little longer, made it last and linger. 

His indecision must have shown on his face. Mizuki smiled, slow and sure.

"You have," he crooned. "You have to. I can feel it from here." He smiled that rare encouraging smile, mischievous and conspirative, appearing mostly back when Iruka’s pranks were directed towards the present target of Mizuki’s ire. "You just have to reach in and grab it. It's that easy."

And there was nothing that could have prevented Iruka from asking - “Grab what?”

Mizuki’s eyes flicked to Kakashi. The glint in his eye was the steel of a primed bear trap - hungry, predatory. The way he had looked at all of his victims, all the people Iruka failed to save.

And he purred, “his soul.”

“No.” The word rose up Iruka’s throat like bile - acid, rancid, choking. “Mizuki, no - “

“It’ll keep you warm,” Mizuki insisted, like he truly believed he could convince Iruka to kill someone. That Iruka would reach into Kakashi’s chest just for that enticing heat. “Keep _us_ warm."

“I can’t - I _won’t -_ ”Iruka turned to Kakashi, who needed to leave _now_. “Kakashi -"

But Kakashi was still looking at Mizuki, far too calmly. 

“Charming.” He commented. “So _he's_ the reason you've been chasing people away.”

“Chasing people away?” Mizuki repeated, honestly and inexplicably perplexed. “Why are you chasing them away?”

“You -” Iruka spluttered. “You'd kill them, that's why!”

A frustrated snarl erupted out of Mizuki - “I _told_ you I couldn't help it!” 

The miasma surged to cover him, obscuring him from sight. Through it, Iruka could catch glimpses, the way Mizuki shivered violently, doubling over and clutching at himself. As though he was desperately searching and conserving what little body heat he never had. 

“I told you it was cold.” He could have been talking to Iruka - or to himself. “I told you, it’s so cold, you wouldn’t listen - I can’t, I can’t…”

His words subsided into an angry mutter, far too garbled for Iruka to hear over the roaring rush of the miasma repeatedly falling and folding into itself. Iruka reached out to grasp Kakashi by his arm, to lead him away - 

Only to freeze when Mizuki raised his head and looked directly at him.

“You're not any better than me.” His eyes were wild and wide, hateful. The miasma roiled faster, agitated. “You just ignore everyone else’s problems until it becomes _your_ s. You chose that brat over me -” 

"You tried to _kill_ him!"

“He was taking you away from me!” Mizuki screamed. “It's always Naruto this, Naruto that - I've been here for you all this time and you never _looked_ at me!”

These words were not new to Iruka. For all the time they spent as ghosts under the same roof, for the brief time Mizuki had to wander beyond the confinements of the fourth floor - some nights, Mizuki would apologize for killing Iruka. Some nights, he would beg Iruka to just talk to him, to say something, to let him hear something other than his own thoughts.

_We’re best friends, aren't we_ , he’d say plaintively in the face of Iruka’s silence. His voice echoing through the hallways to where Iruka hid. _Iruka, please._

But some nights, Mizuki would demand, dark and bitter, how many times Iruka expected him to apologize. He would blame Naruto for being an attention-seeker, and Iruka’s soft heart for indulging the boy. He would rail against Iruka for not listening to him, not looking at him - for not loving Mizuki back the way Mizuki wanted and the way Iruka never could.

_You used me_ , Mizuki would accuse him, low and furious. That miasma spewing and frothing and creeping across the floor and up the walls; Iruka could only curl himself tighter and hope it would not touch him. He was rarely so lucky. Y _ou’d go and fall in love with someone and then come crying back to me, and you never saw me_.

Iruka wished he did see. He wished he saw Mizuki for anything other than a best friend, a brother, someone he would have called family. It would have been easier to hold himself back from comforting him than to feel the guilt slowly constricting his heart.

“You're too stubborn, Iruka.” Mizuki concluded darkly. The miasma draped over him like a shroud. "You're too stubborn for your own good. That's why you'll never understand. You don't want to understand.”

His gaze traveled past Iruka and onto Kakashi. "I'll just have to make you understand.”

Next to Iruka, Kakashi finally, _finally_ , tensed.

“You eat a soul and you'll get it.” Mizuki took another step forward - another step, closer. “You’ll understand what I mean when I tell you I'm cold. And then you'll beg me to keep you warm every night - and I'll do it, Iruka. I would.”

He smiled, a sickly replica of devotion. "Because I love you.”

“ _No_.” 

The word uttered, low and certain; it took Iruka a moment to realise that voice was his own. A declaration of protection borne out of desperation more than courage: it gave him the strength to finally force himself forward, stepping between Kakashi and Mizuki. 

He was still terrified. He wanted to run. Down those stairs and away, as far as he could. But he wasn’t about to let Mizuki kill again, and claim it an act of love. 

That was what gave him the strength to continue, “I won’t let you.” 

Mizuki was stronger. Much stronger for every soul he had consumed. It was why Iruka hid rather than fought, ran rather than confronted him. It did not help that his ghostly abilities waned when night fell, as the boundaries keeping Mizuki within the fourth floor fell away. Objects usually intangible to spirits - tables, doors, and walls - they became solid and impermeable, trapping Iruka with little routes to escape.

But between an afterlife with Mizuki, and another painful and terrible death... 

It was clear which choice was worth fighting for. 

“Kakashi-san,” Iruka said, resolutely not turning to look at him. He poured everything into that pressure building around his hand: his fear, his desperation, his sense of duty. Instead of that wavering sharpness he could barely control during his attempts to attack Kakashi, this pressure wrapped easily, eagerly, around his wrist. There was a sturdiness to it - a resolute and protective sturdiness that matched Iruka’s own.

_It’s all in the intent_ , Kakashi had said. This was what he meant.

Iruka breathed out, bracing himself. “I need you to run.”

“Iruka - “

He snapped - “Run!”

He flung his hand outwards - with it, his intent. The rush of air whistled high and loud as it cut through the space and surged towards Mizuki - 

Only to rend deep into the sudden mass of miasma that had instinctively converged in front of him. Still, despite the miasma blocking the worst of the blow, Mizuki had moved. A few inches, but a few inches away from that flight of stairs - from Kakashi’s escape route.

“Iruka,” Mizuki began. The miasma retracted away from his face - only to rush back into place yet again to deflect another blow. 

Blow after blow, Iruka struck forward, until the miasma would not fall away for the waste of movement. Mizuki was on the defense, but he was guarding himself better after that first attack, moving less and less each time.

And if he retaliated…

No. Iruka could not give him the chance. He had only had to hold his next blow - to wait.

The miasma finally slid downwards to reveal Mizuki’s patronizing gaze. “Finally done?” he asked - 

Only to see Iruka hurling himself through the miasma made insubstantial and towards him, tackling him away from the stairs and into the corridor behind.

More than just a few inches this time - Mizuki went down. For all his success Iruka wasn’t a fighter, and so he fell right after and onto him. The impact against the solid floor shuddered through his bones; it was jarring less for the actual pain than the long absence of it. 

The miasma, that was worse, more than anything else. That moment where he hurled himself through its insubstantial barrier, the dark tendrils that clung to him as they fell. There was no other way to describe how it felt than _hungry_ \- that hunger in a blade thirsting for blood, cold and impersonal. 

An icy chill that seeped in deep, leaching away even the memory of warmth.

( _I'm so cold, Iruka_ , Mizuki moaned as he bent over the body. Unmoving, their face twisted in what looked like immeasurable pain. Dead. 

In his hand was a wispy sphere of light. Something human. Someone’s soul. 

_I'm so cold,_ Mizuki muttered in delirium as he lifted that wisp to his mouth. _I couldn't help it, I can’t, it's so cold…_ )

Iruka shivered, staggering to his feet. The miasma chased after him, covetous in its grasp for him. He needed to get away. He needed to make space between them; he needed -

A hand shot out to yank at his ankle.

He toppled back down onto the ground, the floor hard against his back. Mizuki clambered on top of him, and Iruka flailed right back, clawing and kicking in an attempt to throw Mizuki off him - only to have his wrists pinned down.

Mizuki’s hands were searing, chilled iron upon flesh, the cold so acute it burnt at Iruka’s skin. The miasma gathered around them, pressing close and closer, dripping onto him. Unlike water, there was no splash or the heavy weight of liquid sliding off skin. There was only the cold, grasping, pervading. 

Only this time, the traces and impressions of memories chased the edges of that chill: the coarseness in his throat as he screamed for Naruto to run. The sharp point of a knife as it slid past skin and muscle and into his back. 

The wavering pitch of Naruto’s voice as he begged Iruka to stay alive.

It was almost enough for Iruka to want to escape into the cold instead. Into that void, blank and numb.

He struggled under Mizuki's grip, even if in vain. A hand cupped Iruka's face, and Mizuki hushed him.

"It's okay. It'll be okay." His thumb traced tenderly over Iruka's cheekbone, leaving a trail of frostbite in its wake. "We can do it together. It'll feel good. I promise."

“No,” Iruka begged. His eyes searched wildly over Mizuki's face for the traces of someone who had once been his best friend. “Mizuki, _please_ -”

“It’ll be okay,” Mizuki repeated.

But suddenly Mizuki wasn’t looking down at Iruka anymore, unceremoniously thrown clear off Iruka and into the wall. Iruka could only gape as he registered Kakashi standing next to him, as he noticed Kakashi’s raised arm.

In his hand, inexplicably, the umbrella.

“You okay, sensei?” Kakashi inquired, extending a hand towards Iruka. Iruka took it, pulling himself up. The explosion of warmth from that single touch chased away the lingering chill, so good that Iruka could weep - and weep harder when he had to let it go. “I thought I told you to let me help you.”

“Did you just hit him with your umbrella,” Iruka said stupidly.

His eye curved into what Iruka had come to know as a smile. “I did.”

“How - why -” Iruka spluttered until he realized the implications of Kakashi’s presence. Iruka’s attempt at hindering Mizuki had been ultimately all for nothing if Kakashi was still _here_. “You’re supposed to run away, he’ll kill you -”

"Eh." Kakashi shrugged. "Some ghosts do that."

Iruka boggled. "What?"

"I haven’t been entirely honest with you," Kakashi continued blithely. "I’m not actually a building inspector.”

“I think I figured _that_ out,” Iruka said, his voice strangled. No building inspector walked around with an umbrella that could hit a ghost. But before he could say anything further, Mizuki clambered back onto his feet, his face white and livid.

“You,” Mizuki snarled, low and guttural. Unnatural. “If you wanted to _die_ so badly -”

He lunged towards Kakashi, the trajectory of his hand arcing towards Kakashi’s chest, where it would dig deep past flesh and bone for that warm soul. And Iruka stepped forward, ready to intercept that hand anyway he could - 

Only for something to yank him backwards by the collar of his _kosode_ \- Kakashi. Kakashi who stepped forward, directly into Mizuki’s path. The umbrella rose upwards in a graceful arc as he brandished it - 

Rather like a sword, Iruka realised absently. 

\- and swung at the outstretched arm, forcing the hand to the side. 

There was little Mizuki could do then to block the umbrella as Kakashi pulled sharply back and struck him hard across the throat. 

Mizuki flew backward, crashing against the wall. Iruka could only gape as Mizuki clutched at his neck, gasping for breaths neither of them could take. As Kakashi shifted, returning his umbrella to his side and his gaze to Iruka’s shocked own.

And he said - “I’m an exorcist.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i sure took quite a long time with this, didn't i? in my defense, i'm still in the middle of finals. :P 
> 
> this chapter and the next few chapters when i get to publishing them... i can't say i'm 100% pleased with them, but i think they're as good as they're gonna get. i hope they'll be good for all of you, too.
> 
> i doubt kakashi being an exorcist is a huge revelation, but at least we got to see how hip and cool he is. gai would be proud


End file.
